Iron County students collect data on marten population

By RICHARD JENKINS

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Hurley — Another year of field worked wrapped up Wednesday in the ongoing study of Iron County’s American marten population, with Hurley students exploring the area near Island Lake Road for fresh tracks.

Marten, a member of the weasel family, are endangered in Wisconsin. Males weigh from just over one and a half pounds to almost three pounds and measure roughly 2 feet, while female marten weigh around one and a half pounds and are 18-22 inches long.

The study of county’s American marten — a different animal from the better known Pine marten — is designed to teach the basic ecology and biology of the animal, as well as how to collect the necessary data, according to Zach Wilson, a conservation specialist with the Iron County Land and Water Conservation Department.

“That’s one of the lessons we start off with, just the general natural history of an animal,” Wilson said. “I always say, ‘If you’re going to study an animal — or you could use a reference to hunting or trapping an animal — you better know their biology and ecology, if you’re going to be successful.”

While Mercer’s participation is one of the school’s science classes, Hurley’s is on a voluntary basis and functions more as an extracurricular event. Due to the requirement that Hurley students maintain good grades, Wilson said the study sometimes acts as a motivator for students.

The marten study began 16 years ago studying fishers, another member of the weasel family, said Wilson, who has been involved in the project for 14 years.

The program, now funded by Iron County Forestry Department and the Land and Water Conversation Department, began as the North Lakeland Discovery Center was starting up.

Wilson explained the center approached the Hurley and Mercer School Districts about ways the center could improve their curriculum, ultimately identifying environmental education as an area of focus.

So they set up this program called ‘woods and waters,’ and the woods component ... looked at fishers,” Wilson said, adding a partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources allowed the program capture and radio-collar a fisher.

The program switched to the study of the American marten in 2007, Wilson said, as the fisher project wasn’t providing much beneficial data and very little was known about Wisconsin’s marten population.

The lack of knowledge presented a problem for Wilson and the study.

“The problem was, you go from a species that’s abundant to an endangered species, well that’s a heck of a challenge,” Wilson said. “All we knew was every five years or so, a trapper would accidentally catch a marten in a mink set or a fisher set, so we knew there were some around but we didn’t know their abundance — or even where to start looking.”

After six months of effort, the program successfully caught and tagged the first marten.

“We were just ecstatic, you can imagine,” Wilson said.

As the first animal caught — dubbed Marten No. 1 — was a juvenile, Wilson said they knew there had to be at least two more marten in the area.

Since that first marten, 15 different marten have been radio-collared.

“Our data now is highly looked at, I think, in the state,” Wilson said. “We’ve found some remarkable things, for example, two of the animals we caught here in Iron County ended up having a (digital identification marker) already in (them). Turns out they were animals caught in Minnesota by the DNR, re-located to Mellen — the Clam Lake area in the Chequamegon National Forest — and they took off and came over here, and we caught them.

“So we documented a west-to-east movement of animals, which I think was really an eye opener for the DNR at the time.”

The study has also shown the county’s marten population prefers a very specific type of habitat, and are frequently found in hemlock and cedar stands — particularly those that have relatively dense growth near ground level and connected tree canopies that allow for easy movement and lots of protection.

“It’s very clear our (marten) are choosing a very specific habitat,” Wilson said, adding 99 percent of the time the group found tagged marten, it was in this type of habitat.

Wilson also said that with over 15 different animals and over 100 different documented resting sites, the study has produced some evidence that linking snow depth and temperature to choice of resting sites — in a tree or on the ground.

“What do we know about northern Iron County, one of the deepest snow regions in the state. So marten turn out to be very adaptable in snow, in fact they do better than some of their competitors like fishers that are heavier and sink in the snow,” he said. “We think snow is a major advantage for the marten, maybe that’s why they are doing okay in Iron County.”

Unlike past years, where the study revolved around using beaver meat and skunk lure to catch the animals so they could be radio-collared, Wilson said this year’s project has been using non-invasive methods of study and uses trail cameras spread throughout county to capture the animal’s presence.

Four individual marten have been captured on the trail cams, Wilson said.

While teaching study participants practical skills and exposing them to a possible career involving natural resources work are a key goal; Wilson said he hopes the project is more than that.

“I didn’t want them to just walk around in the woods doing nothing, I wanted them being out there actually collecting good scientific data.”

Part of that mission of scientific contribution is an upcoming opportunity to potentially partner with the University of Purdue to share the field data collected by the Iron County students with researchers at the university.

“I’m connecting our Northwoods kids to Purdue,” Wilson said, “which I think is an awesome connection and opportunity.”