Isle Of Palms Magazine Summer/Fall 2018

14 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com [ Feature ] sighting was just about unheard of along the tidal marshes from the Charleston Harbor north to the South Carolina/ North Carolina line. Fortunately, the SCDNR took action, and the Furbearer Project initiated restoration efforts to help South Carolina’s coastal mink population in 1999. “The obvious goal of the Mink Restoration Program was to restore minks to their native habitats in the northern coastal marshes of the state where they were apparently absent. Over 200 minks were captured and relocated during this project,” said Butfiloski. But why did the mink population decrease in its native habitats in the first place? While pinning down an exact answer is never easy, Butfiloski offered a few explanations: “… the suspected reason for their absence was contaminants, possibly mercury as it affects reproduction. … Other suspected contaminants included PCBs, DDE and dieldrin.” And how does one even capture minks for relocation? That’s a loaded question – and a skill that took some trial and error, even for the SCDNR. Butfiloski and his team tried a variety of methods to catch minks out in the marsh. As for trapping, problems arose with the unpredictability of tides and not always being accessible to check when needed, such as early in the morning. “You don’t want them sitting all day in the sun without a way to regulate whether they needed to get in the water, shade … or you didn’t know if you were getting a really high tide and [it] potentially floated off ...” Butfiloski explained. “Over the years, we learned we could catch them with dip nets, of all things, on really high tides. We were essentially chasing them through the marsh in a boat with somebody on the front with a net,” Butfiloski continued. The most effective method, and the method for the relocation of minks from the Hilton Head area to Dewees Island in June 2004, has proven to be catching a female with her young – no chasing involved. The process is still tedious and requires a great amount of care, as the family unit (the mother and usually the three to five young) must be captured as a whole. In an ideal capture, to isolate the young from the mother, the DNR team would first run the female off from the nest. The team would then pick up the young and put them in a cage trap. Another cage trap would be wired next to the one containing the young. Encouraged by her desire to get back to her young, the mother would be snared by the trap. “Sometimes it happened very quickly; sometimes it didn’t. Generally, we would wait 30 to 45 minutes, and, if she hadn’t come back in that amount of time, we would typically just take them out and set them back. Likewise,