Of 357 Minnesota records, the fisher’s heaviest counts come from two very different ends of the state: the Arrowhead’s Superior National Forest and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in St. Louis, Lake, and Cook counties, and the hardwood fringe north of the Twin Cities in Anoka and Isanti counties. That spread marks a north woods predator that has pushed well beyond the forest core where historic overtrapping and logging once confined it.
A porcupine hunter that needs old trees
The fisher is one of the few predators that routinely kills porcupines, attacking the face and flipping the animal to reach its unprotected belly, and it also takes snowshoe hares, squirrels, and carrion. Just as important is what it dens in. Females raise their kits in cavities in large, old trees, which ties the fisher to mature forest and explains its strongholds in the big timber of the northeast.
Active all winter, easiest to find then
Fishers do not hibernate, and their Minnesota counts run heaviest from January through April. Broad, fur-lined feet let them travel over deep snow where other predators struggle, and late winter is breeding season, with females mating shortly after giving birth through a nearly year-long delayed implantation.
Status in Minnesota
NatureServe lists the fisher SNR, Unranked, in Minnesota and G5, Secure, globally. Native to the state, it is not listed as nonindigenous by USGS NAS.
Full species profile
