urban fisher study (Albany, New York)

Study done by Scott Lapointe and Roland Kayes

From News Article:  "This winter I’m on the track of an urban weasel in Albany — the fisher. These six-to-13-pound members of the weasel family started moving into urban areas 10 years ago, and have been quietly hunting their squirrel and rabbit dinners here ever since... we got our first camera-trap photograph of an Eastern fisher moving through suburban Albany (in 2000). In a century the Northeastern fisher had gone from wilderness animal to suburban predator...

Our approach is to document the ecology and behavior of fishers living in the urban forests of the Capital District, a triangle of suburban development with Albany, Schenectady and Troy, N.Y., as its points. In particular, we want to see how the animals move through and connect the small forest fragments, avoiding speeding cars and still finding enough food. We will then contrast this with what we find in a population of “wild” fishers living about 20 miles away in the forests around Grafton Lakes State Park and Pittstown State Forest."

The urban study site has four times the density of roads and 15 times the population density of the wild site.

Full article & pictures from the New York Times 

Also check out further articles on their Fisher Studies

P.S. Check out my latest "urban wild" nature blog: Wild. Here. (2016 update)