A project set up to prove or disprove the existence of Bigfoot in northern California caught footage of what seems to be the rare Humboldt marten. (Photo : Bluff Creek Project)

Footage of a smallfoot--that is, what is likely the rare Humboldt marten--has been caught on film by Bigfoot seekers in northern California's Del Norte County.

How'd this happen? Long story. Basically, a group called the Bluff Creek Project set up cameras near a creek by that name in the Klamath and Trinity mountains, trying to catch un-wavy footage of Big Foot--or to get no foot-age (get it?), to confirm most biologists' suspicions. They are shooting in the same forested location where the infamous 1967 "Patterson-Gimlin film," which purportedly shows Bigfoot, took place, according to the Bluff Creek Project website.



In the process, the team has caught on film a cinnamon-colored black bear, a regal water bird, and what they say is a Humboldt marten. That slender, weasel-like animal, Martes caurina humboldtensis, is down to 200 individuals by some counts and was considered extinct for many years until it was sighted again in 1996, according to this article from KCET, a public-radio station for central and southern California.

In April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided not to call the marten an Endangered Species. In their reasons, they cited that there are several very similar types of martens throughout the West and that they should not have been divided into subspecies. In response, two wildlife protection groups, the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Biological Diversity told the FWS that they were going to sue them to force them to reconsider naming the marten for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

The film snagged by the Bigfoot project shows at least two images of a Humboldt marten. In one, a marten is running in lightly dusted snow. In another image, the animal is in a similar spot during warmer weather, according to the project website.

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