Our first trail camera footage of a pine marten in Yorkshire in 4 years

Pine marten records are few and far between in Yorkshire.

Since we began our large-scale surveys for pine martens and collating reported sightings here 4 years ago, there’s been 6 confirmed records and 25 unconfirmed reported sightings in the county. In late 2021, we captured our first trail camera videos of a pine marten on the North York Moors since 2017.

In our last pine marten footage in Yorkshire in 2017, we only captured a few clips on our cameras. This time it seems our camera visitor took up residence nearby one of our survey areas, showing up multiple times between October to December 2021 at 6 different camera sites. At two of these sites the pine marten showed interest in den boxes installed as part of the Yorkshire Pine Marten Support Programme.

Going by the unique shape of the creamy-yellow bib fur – a helpful characteristic that enables us to tell individual pine martens apart – we believe that all of this new footage is of one male pine marten, and indeed a different animal compared to our 2017 footage. As you’ll see in the video above, we were treated to a range of behaviours that included scent marking, climbing, interest in the food bait we provided and standing on hind legs when something off camera had caught his attention.

Pine martens are one of our rarest mammals in Yorkshire. We are continuing to work with Forestry England to monitor forests across the North York Moors with camera traps as part of our Pine Marten Conservation Strategy for Yorkshire. If you’ve seen a pine marten in Yorkshire, please get in touch, as this helps us build an evidence base to support pine marten conservation regionally.

Click here to report a pine marten sighting in Yorkshire

Click here to read our Pine Marten Conservation Strategy for Yorkshire

The Yorkshire Pine Marten Project is run by NatureSpy in collaboration with Forestry England. Through a programme of surveys and monitoring, collating and responding to reported sightings, installing den boxes, public engagement and research, we are working towards a long-term vision to restore pine martens to healthy populations in Yorkshire as part of the national restoration of the species. You can learn more about this project over on our project pages.