Chapter 4

The Pine Marten Report

As our world changes, so do the things that live in it, and that applies to humans and animals alike. If a person from two hundred years ago visited Nova Scotia today, they would find it difficult to recognize the place and would soon realize that many of the birds and animals they were once familiar with are either very scarce or no longer here. The caribou are gone. Moose, lynx, and pine marten barely hang on, teetering on the brink of extinction in the province. The last bastion for all three is the Cape Breton Highlands. There are many theories on why such animals are gone or leaving, and opinions on how to bring them back are just as abundant, each supported or denied by a multitude of experts. Every once in a while, someone asks why these experts can’t just stop arguing and do something. It usually gets him or her into trouble. Hope Swinimer has, occasionally, been in that position.

Gretel

One of the things Swinimer had to learn as she established herself in wildlife rehabilitation was how to do the dance of propriety. The Department of Natural Resources, with the full weight of regulations behind it, was her partner in this great wildlife waltz, and she was expected to dutifully follow its lead.

It was always a tentative two-step. Swinimer heeded regulations begrudgingly and was always very ready to skewer them the moment she thought animal interests were at stake. Her willingness to fling herself in front of legal bulldozers on behalf of wildlife inspired media attention and growing public awe. Facing off with her on a legal issue had all the pleasantries of mugging the people’s guardian angel of creatures wild. Rightly or wrongly, the public saw her with wings and a halo.

In 2002, the bob, weave, and jab that had been Hope for Wildlife’s dancing match with the Department of Natural Resources since Swinimer took in her first animal finally came to a crescendo. She found herself backed into a corner over a young pine marten named Gretel. Swinimer decided to fight.

“Gretel,” she said, “was a hill I was willing to die on.”

A marten is a member of the Mustelidae or weasel family, in size bigger than the mink but smaller than the fisher. Like all mustelids, it has anal glands that can make a stink, but nothing as bad as its cousin the skunk. Martens are creatures of mature and old growth coniferous forest. There isn’t much of that left in Nova Scotia, so there aren’t many of these animals left either. A marten is a carnivore, both a treetop and a ground-level hunter, and its traditional prey is the red squirrel.

Not Aquatic

Unlike their cousins the mink and otter, pine marten have distaste for water and seldomswim. However, they are reported to swim well if forced to.

The Gretel crisis did not initially involve Hope for Wildlife. It was rooted in a 1980s decision by the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro. Pine marten were endangered on mainland Nova Scotia, with a small remnant still hanging on precariously in the highlands of Cape Breton, so the college decided to start a breed-and-release program to repopulate the mainland, using marten from New Brunswick. They were extremely successful in the first two years, but then the Department of Natural Resources found out and ordered them to stop. There had been no study done to determine if pine marten from northern New Brunswick were genetically the same as those few left in Nova Scotia, and without that study, introductions were illegal. The Agricultural College, with a lot of animals and an active breeding program, changed what it was doing and started fur farming instead.

This small animal almost caused Hope Swinimer’s arrest when she fought government regulations to keep her. “Gretel was a hill I was willing to die on,” Swinimer said.

Enter Hope Swinimer. She believed children in Nova Scotia were learning about endangered animals from all over the world but not those in their home province. Swinimer asked Natural Resources for permission to get a marten for use in education, to show Nova Scotians a native species they had likely never seen, and probably would never see in the wild. For four years, the Department denied this request.

There were three reasons why officials at DNR were said to oppose Swinimer’s request. One was that she was a rehabilitation centre operator and pine marten were not on her rehab license. Secondly, Nova Scotians could already see marten in a display pen at the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park. And, of course, there was a third small issue that had been raised before: Swinimer was not supposed to be doing educational work. That was the job of Natural Resources.

Like all Mustelidae, the pine marten Gretel could be cute one minute, a darting little demon the next.

Swinimer seldom took no for an answer on such matters, and each year she was denied, she became more adamant.

“I really felt that Nova Scotians needed to know what was going on right in their own backyards, and what better way than to have an endangered species from Nova Scotia for them to learn about?” she said. “DNR said no four years in a row, but I’m very persistent. I just pick, pick, pick away until I hopefully get the answer I want.”

Then one day, fate stepped it up a notch. The Agricultural College called to tell Swinimer one of their female marten had died shortly after giving birth. There were two little ones, eyes still closed, and could she save them? Would she come to get them? Swinimer did not have the required permit but she was in Truro within an hour to take the babies.

Marten Hunters

“Curious,” “quick,” and “ferocious” are the best words to describe a pine marten on the hunt. Although known as excellent climbers, they take most of their food on the ground with the exception of birds’ eggs and nestlings. Marten endlessly and inquisitively search the roots of downed trees, under stumps, in hollow trees and logs, and through young growth coniferous thickets. In winter, they often hunt under the snow, following squirrel tunnels. Loggers have reported seeing them stealing human food left unguarded.

The pair were named Hansel and Gretel, and both were ill, the male very ill. He died only a few days after arriving in Seaforth and from his necropsy the cause was found to be a parasite passed on from his mother. It was easily treated once identified, but Gretel was already in bad shape and it took around-the-clock care to save her.

Swinimer knew from the outset that Gretel would never be released. The Department of Natural Resources had stopped the College release program and would be watching her. Instead, she took the young marten into her home, gave it special care, scrapped all rehabilitation training, and began to raise Gretel to be friendly and comfortable with people so she could one day serve in education. For about four months, no one seemed to notice what Swinimer was doing. Then one day, it turned out she had been watched all along.

“Out of the blue I got a letter from the Department of Natural Resources saying what I was doing was illegal. I had to give up Gretel. I was not allowed to keep her and that if I didn’t turn her over, they would put out a warrant for my arrest,” Swinimer said.

The threat of arrest was based on the fact that no one in Nova Scotia was allowed to keep wildlife as pets, and since this animal was not being rehabbed for release, it was a pet. That was the Department of Natural Resources’ interpretation of the law. But it was not Hope Swinimer’s. She was aware of the regulation, but did not consider Gretel a pet, just as she had not considered other rescued animals that needed special care pets.

In her lush winter coat, Gretel shows her friendly side to a young guest.

While Department of Natural Resources brass threatened its founder and director, Hope for Wildlife still received orphans and injured daily from Natural Resources field workers, and Swinimer and her volunteers treated the animals brought to them with care they could not get elsewhere. They neither complained about numbers nor questioned their condition. Unofficially, the Hope for Wildlife staff had grown through several years of joint work to think of itself as DNR’s partner in wildlife.

“I was very aware of the rules about wildlife as pets,” Swinimer said. “But I didn’t consider myself an ordinary citizen in wildlife matters. They were bringing me animals every day. I’d had training and was doing, I thought, a tremendous service to the province.”

The resulting war of threats and words lasted a year and a half. Barry Sabean, director of Wildlife for Nova Scotia, led the attack on what Swinimer was doing with Gretel.

“The department does not support the keeping of wildlife as pets or to take such animals to schools, meetings, seminars, or any other public gathering,” wrote Sabean. “People sometimes get the wrong idea and feel that it would be neat to have, say, a pet marten because they are cute and cuddly-looking.”

He also pointed out that his staff had been telling Swinimer for four years she could not have a marten.

Swinimer came to believe that while the provincial wildlife workers on the front line valued what she did, the suits in offices didn’t even understand it. The more they pushed her, the more she pushed back.

“I’m the kind of person who picks her battles very carefully,” she said, “and I pick very few. I find I can always work things out with people, even if I have to try ten thousand times. I don’t give up easily. But every once in a while, there are things you really have to take a stand on. I can probably count on one hand the number of things in my lifetime I felt strongly enough about to fight. Gretel was one of them.

“I felt that they were wrong on this, for the best interest of the animal and the province. Because of what I wanted to use Gretel for, and what her quality of life would be like, I could think of no good reason why they should say no.”

To the news media, it was an irresistible story: the little wildlife worker offering her heart, the big bad government department unable to take it because of regulations, and in the middle, a cute animal. As it dragged on, more and more people came out to Seaforth to look at the creature responsible. Gretel became a celebrity and a cause.

“It was simply amazing how much publicity it got. All the politicians knew who Gretel was. I’d meet one somewhere and the first thing they’d say would be ‘How’s Gretel?’ I was getting more and more people on my side. Politicians would come to visit, to see Gretel and find out what all the buzz was about. They couldn’t understand why I was getting so much grief and running up against so many stone walls.”

In the end, the stone walls crumbled. Threatened with imminent arrest, Swinimer went for and got national media coverage, and immediately afterward two lawyers publicly offered to defend Hope and Gretel free of charge, and begged for a court date. Across Canada, network television, radio shows, newspapers, and magazines eagerly awaited Swinimer’s arrest and Gretel’s seizure, but suddenly and unexpectedly, it was over. A one-year permit appeared under Sabean’s signature allowing Swinimer to keep Gretel for educational purposes. Every year since, another has followed, even after Director Sabean retired.

Gretel settled in, safe and legal at last, and Swinimer began trying to build a bond with her. She knew it would not be as easy with a marten as it had been with other species. Members of the weasel family can be fickle in their choice of friends, and they also can be unpredictable. Swinimer acknowledged that a relationship with Gretel was not easily forged.

“Once you get to know Gretel, she’s very friendly,” she explained, “but not a lot of people have bonded with Gretel. Only about five of my volunteers get along with her, play with her, interact with her. Most of them just couldn’t care less about her in a lot of ways, because she wouldn’t allow them to get to know her. You have to put your time and effort in with Gretel. Then she’ll become your friend and she’ll trust you.”

Gretel, Swinimer admitted, was always a sneak…and a very intelligent one. At times, it was obvious from the look on her face she was planning something.

“She’s been just like a child in her behaviour. She’ll wait until you leave the room to do something bad, and she knows it’s something bad, so as soon as you come back and catch her, she’ll run away,” Swinimer said.

Guests were her special victims and seldom escaped her curiosity.

“When people came to visit, she’d run into their pockets and grab whatever looked interesting, their cigarettes or their car keys usually. She was always in trouble, always looking for something to play with, to have fun with.”

Gretel’s playfulness may get her into trouble, but it is also the key to recapturing her when she gets outside. Swinimer reported her escapes are quite common, “maybe fifteen or twenty times all told,” but never a real problem.

“I go outside near where she is, and I lay down on the grass,” Swinimer explained. “She just can’t resist it. She has to come over and jump on me and play. It works every time.”

Mustelid Family Planning

Most female members of the weasel family can control their pregnancies until conditions are best for their offspring. Fertilized eggs are held undeveloped for several months until the mother’s body tells her food and climate conditions are at their best. When her reproductive system gets the signal, the eggs develop and the young are born. This is called delayed implantation.

The playful side of Gretel has been experienced by a choice few. Many people never get past a rough introduction, and then simply avoid her. One unfortunate person, however, always gets the nasty treatment and cannot avoid it. For Swinimer’s companion, Reid Patterson, it has made for many trying situations.

“She just hates him,” Swinimer laughed. “It’s just bizarre. She’ll tolerate him if I’m there, but if he walks by and I’m not in the room, she’ll lunge at him, growl, and bite him.”

Swinimer believed jealousy was part of the problem, but thought it went further than that. In her mind, some men do not relate well to animals because they feel a need to control them.

“The real reason is that Reid always tried to discipline her. It’s this male gene thing,” Swinimer explained. “Men think they can control wildlife, and they can’t. But they try, so when Gretel would do something bad, he would pound his feet and yell at her. He just set himself up for failure. Now she treats him like the enemy.”

Allison Dube, coordinator of Hope for Wildlife, has seen both nasty and nice sides of the pine marten and developed a theory that the two didn’t depend so much on how you approach her, but when. According to Dube, it should never be forgotten that pine marten are nocturnal animals. At night, they are active, playful, and friendly. By day, they are cantankerous and just want to be left alone. With Gretel, the problem is that most people attempt to make friends with her during the daytime.

A coat like Gretel’s is one reason pine marten were so popular with trappers and became rare in Nova Scotia.

Dube remembered the first evening she met Gretel.

“She jumped around and crawled all over me,” Dube said, “through the pouch of my hoodie, up my shirt, into my hood, and then hopped to the counter with blazing speed. I couldn’t get enough of her. When she was still enough, I got to pat her for a second, and she was off again.”

It was only later that Dube realized what had just happened.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” she said. “First impressions, like with people, are so important with animals. My first experience with Gretel was as a playful, fun critter. Others aren’t so fortunate. They meet her in the daytime when she growls, bites, and prefers to be left alone.”

Dube knew she would never be as close to Gretel as Swinimer. However, by learning how to consider the time of day and her habits, she has come closer to the marten than other Hope for Wildlife workers, especially new recruits.

“People who meet Gretel for the first time in her ‘unhappy’ mood look at me like I have three heads when I tell them there are times she will crawl all over me, and I can play and wrestle with her,” she said. “I’m one of the lucky ones to know Gretel the way I do.”

When this book was written, Gretel was eight years old and still with Hope for Wildlife. She was cantankerous and mischievous, not mellowing at all as she slipped past middle age, but had become a respected elder in the Hope for Wildlife animal world, one who helped shape Hope Swinimer. Gretel’s unsettled early days and the battle over priorities with government officials had proved an invaluable education.

“This whole thing taught me so much about government, that things often don’t make sense, and that’s a tough lesson to learn,” Swinimer said. “It also made me wonder about education. Most people don’t even know what she is. All the kids know that pandas are endangered, that certain whales are endangered. They know about rhinos, they know about things all over the world, but they do not know what is endangered right in their own backyard. I think that’s a shame.”