We've got one in the woods out behind the field. I haven't seen it, but landlady's son has. I have seen its tracks and where it caught something just off one of the trails out back. I like them. I may be in the minority, but I find them fascinating. And they are frequently unfairly blamed for missing cats. It's usually coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and great horned owls that take cats. Fishers' main prey is snowshoe hares, but 20% of their diet is porcupine. They used to be brought in to keep down the porcupine populations in areas being harvested for timber. As for population, well, I don't see any decline in here in Maine, if anything, they seem to be more common than when I was kid. Might have something to do with needing standing dead snags of a certain height and diameter to use for den trees. After the ice storm in '98, we've got a lot of dead stuff the right size now, and plenty of porcupines.