A member of the weasel family found in forests of Alaska, Canada and the northern United States.
It has short legs, rounded ears and curved claws for climbing. Its fur is yellowish brown, with darker legs and tail and a white or yellow throat patch.
In southern Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest, American martens were surveyed with cameras in winter from 2019 to 2021. Researchers used 238 cameras in 40 survey units and recorded martens at 93 cameras. Their models separated the chance that martens used a site from the chance that a camera detected them.
Camera sites with more canopy cover tended to have greater local occupancy, while cameras farther from documented release sites were less likely to detect martens. A camera with no record therefore does not prove that a forest is unused. In this region, maintaining forest cover and accounting for camera distance in long-term surveys can help track the population’s distribution.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In southern Vermont, local camera-site occupancy was positively associated with canopy cover, while detection declined farther from release sites. Maintaining forest cover and accounting for detectability in monitoring can help track use of this range-edge landscape.