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The Humboldt Marten, nature's adorable serial killer, faces threat from cannabis farms

It’s a kitten that thinks it’s a honey badger. It will crawl right into a bee nest and eat the honeycomb and larvae, getting its face stung the whole time. Tierra Curry, Center for Biological Diversity

The secretive kitten-sized carnivore was thought to have gone extinct in 1947. But in 1996 the small mammal, full of cuteness with a button nose and bushy tail, resurfaced again, and is now estimated to have a population of less than 100.

Historically the coastal marten, also known as the Humboldt marten, were hunted for its mink-like fur and driven from its home in the ancient, over-logged coastal forests of Northern California. Related to minks and otters, the coastal marten survives today in only three isolated pockets of old growth forest and dense coastal shrub.

The pet sized and extremely secretive animal can bite through the face of mammals of similar size or smaller, other foods include berries, birds, lizards and insects. They in turn are preyed upon by larger mammals and raptors.

There are two populations, with 100 in Oregon and an estimated 200 in three northern California counties – which, unfortunately for them, overlap with California’s Emerald Triangle, an epicenter of cannabis cultivation.

Besides logging and hunting/trapping, other threats to the marten include wildfire, the loss of  genetic diversity due to population separation through forest fragmentation, a tiny overall population size, climate change, and collision with vehicles. In addition a new threat has emerged, marijuana cultivation in northern California, both legal and illegal, which results in exposure to rat killer and other pesticides according to the Center for Biological Diversity

The Guardian reports on the threat. 

In one county alone, Humboldt, there are thought to be 4,000 to 15,000 cannabis cultivation sites on private property, in addition to illegal or “trespass grows” on public or tribal lands. Not only is forest habitat lost to cannabis crops, but many growers in Humboldt use anticoagulant rodenticides to keep rodents from chewing through irrigation lines or eating their food supplies.

This inserts the poison into the forest food webs, which can cause birds and mammals that prey upon rodents – such as the marten – to die from uncontrollable internal bleeding. The rat poison and pesticides also run off into rivers, where wild salmon are at less than 5% of their historical population.

Mike McRae raises an important question in Science Alert. Why can’t we have both marijuana and a healthy marten population?

Cannabis can now be owned and grown in California, providing opportunity for economic growth and freeing police resources to focus on things other than pot.

Following changes to state law, adults can apply for a license to cultivate cannabis crops.

That doesn't mean everybody follows the rules; by some estimates, fewer than one in a hundred growers have a license. With literally thousands of cultivation sites popping up across the state, all of this makes for a challenging problem to solve.

A happier headline might have been 'California set to ban gut-bleeding rodenticides in the face of wildlife risks'.

But right now we'll take what we can get, and keep our fingers crossed something happens soon.

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