Original Title: Weiss: Old friends return — fisher, bobcat sightings on the rise

BEAVER — Michael Joyce stood atop a cold Whitewater Valley bluff, ready to take a deeper look into the life of a fisher, a small, reclusive carnivore making a dramatic comeback to the southeast after being wiped out a century ago.

The wildlife ecologist with the Natural Resources Research Institute, part of the University of Minnesota Duluth, is leading the first research about fishers because he’s fascinated by that large member of the weasel family that was once thought to live only in old-growth conifer forests, such as those in northeastern Minnesota. The thought was wrong. They are taking to the southeast and its deciduous forests in large and growing numbers.

Full story here.