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Marten visits are a glimpse into mystery

A trapper fresh out of the Cosna River country in Interior Alaska said he can’t believe how many martens he had caught in a small area so far this winter.

Friends are talking about the house-cat size creatures visiting their wood piles and porches. Could this be a boom in the number of these handsome woodland creatures?

Probably, said wildlife education specialist Mike Taras of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.

“When I was out in the (White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks) a couple of weeks ago, I saw marten tracks everywhere,” he said. “My friend had a hare bound close towards him while he was out near Wolf Run cabin and then a marten came loping after the hare hot on its trail.”

The biologist and tracking expert doesn’t even have to leave home to see signs of marten this spring.

“I currently have a marten coming by my place at the edge of (Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge) about once a week. It is great to see her tracks — though it could be a juvenile male. I have noticed more marten tracks out on Creamer’s refuge in the past few years as well.”

The Cosna River area trapper, Steve O’Brien, said he thought “more mice” were a possible reason for marten abundance this year. Taras suspected the same.

“Research shows that the number one driver of marten populations is vole numbers,” Taras said. “But I don’t think there is concrete evidence of high vole numbers this year.”

But Taras has seen some circumstantial evidence recently.

“I have noticed multitudes of ventilation tunnel holes on top of the snow after these recent snowstorms,” Taras said. “That many holes on top of the snow shortly after the snow makes me think that there are a lot of voles out there.”

Whatever the cause for increased marten numbers, now is perhaps a good time to see these predators of the northern woods.

“One trapper aptly described them as walking stomachs,” Tom Paragi, a retired wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, told me 26 years ago. “They’re one of the easier animals to trap.”

Like other members of the weasel family, marten hunt and kill small animals, most often voles, though they sometimes eat snowshoe hares, young birds and blueberries.

Marten feed on red squirrels in other parts of North America, but in Alaska biologists have seen marten sharing squirrels’ underground network of winter tunnels without killing them.

Marten aren’t afraid to tackle animals their own size, Paragi said. He once pieced together a marten drama evident by tracks left behind in the snow. He observed where a marten paused during its wandering after seeing a goshawk perched on a low tree limb.

He could tell by blood and other marks that the marten killed the goshawk, making a meal of a raptor that could have had the marten for lunch.

“They are fairly fearless,” Paragi said.

Marten are loners, roaming forests solo except for a few weeks during the breeding season. They seem to prefer mature conifer forests for birthing and raising young, and use hollow logs for dens.

The marten is one of a few mammals able to delay part of its reproductive cycle. Marten mate in mid-summer when food is plentiful, but fertilized eggs within females don’t implant into the uterus wall until springtime, a phenomenon triggered by longer days. Marten kits are born in late March to mid-April. In August, the youngsters go their own ways, beginning solitary lives that can last up to 14 years.

Since the late 1970s, the ������Ƶ' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute. Portions of this story appeared in 2000.