A Pacific marten has been recorded by a motion-triggered wildlife camera in Olympic National Forest — the first time the elusive animal has been recorded by a camera survey in the forest.

Officials said the discovery was part of an ongoing collaboration between Woodland Park Zoo and Olympic National Forest.

Six motion-triggered cameras were installed last summer, along with scent dispenser stations, in Olympic National Forest in hopes of detecting martens.

Martens are a rare native carnivore thought to be occurring there in only very sparse numbers. 

Officials said the survey team returned to the station a month ago and discovered multiple photos of a single Pacific marten, which had visited the station in January 2022.

Only two dozen marten sightings have been confirmed on the Olympic Peninsula in the last half century, with half of these attributed to surveys with remote cameras and scent dispensers over the last few years.

All of those sightings, however, have been in Olympic National Park.

Pacific martens (Martes caurina) are small-housecat-sized, semi-arboreal members of the Mustelidae (weasel) family, which also includes wolverines, fishers, otters, and other species. Historically, their populations in Washington primarily occurred in two disjunct areas, the Cascade Range and the Olympic Peninsula. Marten populations in the Cascades generally inhabit forests at high elevations and appear to be relatively stable.

On the Olympic Peninsula, martens once occupied a broad elevational range, from coastline to timberline. 

But due to over-trapping and habitat loss in the 1900s, martens appear to be gone at lower elevations and to occur at very low densities at higher elevations.

From 1968 through 2016, only nine reliable marten records were recorded on the Olympic Peninsula, despite extensive camera surveys beginning in the 1990s. 

Then, in 2017, Woodland Park Zoo partnered with Olympic National Forest, Olympic National Park, and the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct overwinter surveys, pairing cameras with scent dispensers programmed to release a small amount of attractive lure on a regular basis.

Originally developed by the zoo in partnership with Microsoft Research and Idaho Fish and Game, officials said the dispensers dramatically increase the period of time over which carnivore survey stations can be left operational in remote locations (up to a year) without biologists having to revisit for rebaiting or maintenance.

Between 2017 and 2019, the surveys yielded an additional 13 marten detections, all in Olympic National Park. 

The surveys more than doubling the number of reliable records acquired in the last half century, officials noted. An additional two incidental observations were made in 2019 in Olympic National Forest.

“Martens and other carnivores are important to the community ecology of Northwest ecosystems,” said Robert Long, PhD, Senior Conservation Scientist and Director, Living Northwest Program at Woodland Park Zoo. 

“The zoo is thrilled to be able to bring our innovative survey methods to this collaborative project, and eager to help secure a future for martens on the Olympic Peninsula,” Long added.

Since 2008, Olympic National Forest has been working with many partners, including Woodland Park Zoo, to survey for Pacific martens. 

With concern about historic impacts to the species — trapping and habitat removal — and current threats presented by climate change, the effort has involved federal and state agencies, nonprofit organizations, volunteer community scientists, many hundreds of hours of labor, and the collection of thousands of remote camera photographs.

“The longstanding collaboration to better understand the distribution and health of the Pacific marten population on the Peninsula has been building successes over time, and Olympic National Forest staff are very pleased to be a part of such a great team,” said Betsy Howell, a wildlife biologist in Olympic National Forest.