Even young kids quickly learn to recognize and remember the porcupine because it is a unique animal with a unique defense. The Yellow-Haired Porcupine is a native species of the Sierra Nevada region that historically is found from Kern County north throughout the range. Large individuals can stretch up to 36” from head to tip of tail and can weigh as much as 20 pounds. Most reports over the years place porcupines in the high elevation lodgepole pine and fir forests, but reports and road kill observations in recent years have shown that porcupines can also occasionally be found down in oak woodland habitat extending far out into the foothills. |
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Online descriptions of the porcupine refer to it as “the most relaxed animal” because most porcupines have nothing to fear from predators or people. The pelage of the porcupine on the body and tail covers extremely long barb-pointed yellow quills with black tips that the porcupine can raise or lower as it reacts to potential threats.
The quills are hollow tubes roughly 1/8” in diameter that can reach up to 3” in length, with each tip exhibiting backward-facing barbs. Because the quills are loosely held in the porcupine’s skin, if the quills slap against a coyote, bobcat, or other threat to the porcupine, the quills immediately detach and imbed into the predator-turned-victim. Some veterinarian reports describe the quills working deep into the victim’s body over time.
Once common throughout the region, porcupines were aggressively hunted and poisoned by timber industry and U.S. Forest Service land managers in the 1950’s and 1960’s because the porcupines fed on the growing tips of young conifers in tree plantations. The rows of uniform young trees planted after clearcutting proved highly attractive to the porcupines. Lethal control measures were extremely effective, and in recent decades porcupine sightings have become uncommon to rare across much of the Stanislaus National Forest and the private timberlands of the region.
In addition to the intriguing features of the porcupine such as its unusual spiny covering and its fearless disposition, the porcupine is an important forest species for many reasons. The Pacific fisher is a predator that evolved to be able to successfully attack the vulnerable underside of the porcupine. The fisher is large enough to prey on the porcupine and quick enough to evade the menacing quills of the slapping tail. For multiple reasons including trapping and logging impacts, fishers have apparently disappeared from a vast region of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem - stretching from Yosemite Park all the way north to Mount Shasta. There have been no proven detections of the fisher in more than a decade within that vast area of the mountains, despite CSERC’s furbearer photo surveys and other scientific photo-detection efforts to draw in the rare fisher.
In recent years, highly effective studies of the fisher have focused on its habitat preferences, the diseases that presently affect the fisher population, and predators that prey on fishers, but the question of how the fisher is or isn’t affected by the status of porcupines is not well understood. |
Accordingly, to begin to fill the gap of information about the porcupine’s current status, CSERC is initiating a gathering of sighting reports.
WE ARE ASKING CSERC MEMBERS, PUBLIC AGENCY BIOLOGISTS, AND ALL OTHERS WHO SPEND TIME IN THE SIERRA NEVADA REGION TO REPORT ANY PORCUPINE DETECTION OBSERVED IN 2011.
To report your personal sighting of a porcupine, please contact Lindsey Myers, CSERC staff biologist, at: lindseym@cserc.org, or call: (209) 586-7440.
Please provide the following information:
A) Time and date of sighting
B) Specific location of sighting, as detailed as possible
C) Any description of porcupine behavior observed
D) If road-kill, a description of the road condition, speed limit, etc.
E) Any additional information you think is worth sharing…
F) A photo if at all possible will also be extremely helpful.
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO OBSERVE A PORCUPINE IN THE REGION STRETCHING FROM YOSEMITE TO LAKE TAHOE AND WHO TAKE THE TIME TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PORCUPINE SIGHTING SURVEY.
CSERC WILL PERIODICALLY QUANTIFY AND UPDATE THE RESULTS OF OUR SURVEY ON THIS WEBSITE. WE WILL ALSO PROVIDE A FINAL 2011 PORCUPINE SURVEY REPORT TO ALL WHO REQUEST IT. SEND US YOUR SIGHTINGS!
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