The European pine marten

THE EUROPEAN PINE MARTEN 

A sighting of a female European Pine marten

The European pine marten (Martes martes) is a small, cat-sized animal that belongs to the weasel family. It lives in forests across most of Europe, from Scotland and Ireland to parts of Asia Minor and Iran. Although it was once rare in many places, this shy forest animal is now making a great comeback.

The pine marten has soft brown fur with a creamy-yellow patch on its chest, which looks like a little scarf. Its body grows up to about 53 centimeters long, with a bushy tail of around 25 centimeters. It weighs about 1.5 to 1.7 kilograms. Pine martens are light, quick, and great at climbing trees.

They prefer woodlands and forests, where they can hunt and hide among the trees. In Scotland, they used to be found only in the northwest, but now they have spread across the Highlands and even reached the islands of Skye and Mull. In England, they were thought to be extinct for over a century, but one was photographed in Shropshire in 2015. Since then, there have been more sightings and even baby pine martens in Yorkshire, Northumberland, and the New Forest. In Wales, pine martens were reintroduced in 2015, and the project has been successful. In Ireland, they are still quite rare but growing in number, and they help native red squirrels by hunting the invasive grey squirrels.

Pine martens are mostly active at night. They are excellent climbers thanks to their semi-retractable claws. Their diet includes small mammals, insects, fruits, berries, birds, and bird eggs. They are playful and curious animals that spend much of their time exploring trees and branches.

Mating usually happens in summer, around July and August. However, the babies, called kits, are born the next spring, between March and April. A mother pine marten gives birth to one to five kits and raises them in a safe den, often inside a hollow tree. The young start to leave the den after about eight weeks.

Unfortunately, pine martens face several threats. They lose their habitat due to deforestation, and some are still illegally hunted or poisoned. Road accidents are another danger. However, in the United Kingdom, they are fully protected by law, meaning it is illegal to harm them or damage their dens.

Pine martens are very important to the forest ecosystem. They help control rodent and squirrel populations and spread seeds through the fruits they eat. In Ireland and the UK, their return has even helped red squirrels recover, as pine martens naturally keep grey squirrel numbers low.

In Croatia, the pine marten is a national symbol. It appears on Croatian euro coins, and the old Croatian currency was called “kuna,” which means “marten.”

The European pine marten is a symbol of how nature can recover when people take action to protect it. Once nearly gone, this clever, agile creature is now returning to forests across Europe, showing that wildlife can thrive again when given the chance.