If you have never seen a marten in the Yukon, that is not terribly surprising. Secretive and shy, they lead mainly solitary lives and are quick enough to stay out of view. Forest-dwellers, these members of the weasel family are known to prefer old growth stands.

Yukon biologists are now trying to learn more about the exact types of forest that marten prefer in the southeast Yukon. In addition to their own time in the field, they have been talking to the Yukoners who already have years of experience with these animals -- local trappers.

"Marten are important in this region as they are the bread and butter species for most trappers," says Jan Adamczewski, the Liard regional biologist. "There are a few traplines in the southeast where trappers may catch 250 to 300 marten in a really good year."

In 2002 and 2003, Adamczewski and Barney Smith, the Yukon government's Traditional Ecological Knowledge Specialist, set up meetings with ten long-time trappers in the southeast Yukon.

"They had an average of 30 years of experience each, so we knew we were talking to people with a lot of knowledge," says Adamczewski.

The biologists wanted to find out where the trappers caught the most marten. They started off by asking about lowland areas where they thought marten would be most plentiful.

"The technical literature says that old forests with big trees and lots of structural complexity are the best marten habitat, so we had assumed that in the southeast that would mean lowland areas, such as river bottoms, with big white spruce and lots of deadfall."

Each of the ten trappers picked the lowland site where they caught the most marten, and their reasons for picking these sites fit well with the technical literature on marten.

The surprise came when the biologists asked each of the trappers to compare their best lowland and best upland sites. They had expected to hear that there were fewer marten in the upland sites, but that was not the case.

Instead most of the trappers caught more marten in their best upland sites -- not the lowland ones. On average these upland sites were about 40 percent more productive than the lowland ones; some were twice as productive.

"The range in results was remarkable -- and it told us that marten use all forest types to some extent, from river bottoms to treeline," says Adamczewski.

"I think in part this information shows that we did not understand the upland forest as much as we should have. In the last few years we have started to see that it is relatively complex. Most of it is 100 to 120 years old, but some stands don't burn in big fires and are 160 to 180 years old."

Forestry has been a controversial issue in the southeast Yukon for some time, and right now the Kaska Forest Resources Stewardship Council is trying to determine where wood can be cut in the short term while a regional forest management plan is developed for the whole region.

Adamczewski is part of a technical group reporting to the Kaska Council, part of the collaborative forest planning effort between the Kaska and various agencies of the Yukon and federal governments.

"The overall goal of the marten work here is to come up with a set of logging guidelines that would use marten as a focus, but we need to tailor any guidelines to Yukon forests," says Adamczewski, adding that this is not a new concept.

"Both New Brunswick and Ontario already have guidelines that use marten as an indicator species for other wildlife that need old forests, and in those two provinces forestry companies work within these guidelines."

Woodland caribou, which also depend on mature forests, will be another key species in the larger forestry plan, but their range does not extend into the area being considered for the interim wood supply.

For the technical side of the study, Adamczewski has been comparing two study areas close to Watson Lake -- one unlogged and one which was logged about a decade ago.

After counting tracks of smaller mammals in the two areas, he and other members of the study team confirmed that marten were indeed more abundant in the unlogged sites. "There were some in the leave areas between cut-blocks, but few in the cutblocks themselves."

Mice were found to be plentiful in both sites, but there were more red-backed voles -- the martens' favourite food -- in the unlogged area.

Adamczewski said that the study could not have happened without the partnership of the extended Kaska family which holds rights to the traplines in the study area near Watson Lake, and act as land stewards there as well.

"For the Kaska, being a land a steward goes far beyond being the trapline holder; there is a sense of managing and taking care of the land. So we have that partnership with the land stewards, and they agreed not to trap marten in our study blocks for the duration of the study."

The plan is to continue the marten research until they have fairly detailed knowledge of where the best marten habitat is located in the southeast Yukon and how it could be affected by logging. He hopes they can reach the point where they can show on a map which areas are particularly important for marten -- and for the trappers.

For more information on marten research in the southeast Yukon, contact Jan Adamczewski at jan.adamczewski@gov.yk.ca.