Bringing Back the Marten

OF all the strange cargo arriving this summer at the West Lebanon Airport, one of the most unusual shipments was received when two specially constructed aluminum pens were unloaded, each cage holding a snarling, spitting pine marten trapped in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario. The penned animals were so valuable and so anxious to escape that warnings not to open the sealed doors were printed in three languages.

Marten are closely related to the Asiatic sable (Martes zihellina), which were the subject of a feature article in the SaturdayEvening Post of August 15. However, there is no doubt as to the aboriginal nature of the air-borne fur-bearers: their scientific name is Martes americana americana.

Preceding this shipment were twenty months of negotiations with officials of the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests, as well as approval by the N. H. Fish and Game Department and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A special ruling by the U. S. Customs Service was necessary because this species (known as "sable" when it reaches the furrier's world) was not included among the long list of more common animals that can be imported to the United States.

The pair was soon released on a remote slope of Black Mountain in the heart of the Dartmouth College Grant at a location known only to the College Forester; Harry Hurlbert, the local State Conservation Officer; Nate Fellows, biologist of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Game; and Sam Brungot, fire patrolman of the Diamond River country.

Black Mountain, like the ten other elevations in New Hampshire with the same name, was so called because its upper slopes supported a thick "black growth" of spruce and fir, so stunted and hard to reach that the dense thickets were passed up by the loggers. On these wild, virgin crags the red squirrel flourished and the marten, their chief predator, once ruled the roost until its virtual extermination in northern New Hampshire, Vermont, and most of Maine. The marten for many years has been as rare in northern New England as the fabulous Vermont panther.

In 1829 Ethan Allen Crawford trapped 75 "sable" on the rugged rim of the White Mountain Notch that bears his name. Subsequently, logging operations reached back into the habitat of the marten and liquidated the most valuable fur-bearer that ever roamed the uplands of New England.

Whether the disappearance of this once common animal was caused by the clearing of the virgin spruce stands where the red squirrel, its principal prey, fed upon the prolific spruce seed or the activities of lumber jack-trappers is still an open question. But the combination proved too much for the marten to survive.

An enterprising woodsman, in the days when marten were not protected by law, could drill a two-inch hole into a spruce tree, stuff into the opening a dead squirrel, ring the hole with three nails so spaced that a marten could not withdraw its head, and thus catch himself a valuable pelt.

The marten, despite his prowess in other fields, was a "sucker" for that simple trap and his curiosity about dead squirrels stuffed into spruce trees eventually led to his extermination.

The marten is more vicious than the blood-thirsty weasel, faster in the tree-tops than the lively squirrel, and more valuable than the prized fisher. He is in a class of his own, as explained by Craig Thompson

Whether the marten can be reestablished in his former haunts will not be decided until his (and her) tracks show in the first snows of late fall. Even though this initial pair takes to the land, it will be some time before a marten population can be restored in the North Country.

Many years ago the deer was a rare animal in northern New Hampshire but he "came back" with the extermination of the wolf and legal protection provided by State law most of the year. More recently, the beaver, the fisher, and the moose have shown a remarkable capacity to thrive, if given half a chance. Perhaps the marten will follow the same pattern.

The Saturday Evening Post claims "sables are a Soviet monopoly." But the hope remains that this same animal, once common in northern New England, may some day be reestablished hereabouts—thanks to a timely assist from our cooperative neighbors in Ontario who have learned better than we how to perpetuate a fur harvest.