Oxford University Press is pleased to announce a partnership with the American Ornithological Society to publish @AukJournal and @CondorJournal. @AmOrnith
Video of a wovlerine attacking and harming a reindeer. We can see that the reindeer is fighting a lot against the wolverine, and it is in the end escaping with large wounds.
Filmed during a blizzard with mobile camera, so there is a lot of snowdust and distortion. The video is still extremely rare, and it is hard to find similar video of wolverines hunting.
A wolverine in the Bridger
Mountains north of Bozeman, Mont. A federal court ruling revived the
debate over whether the animal, a member of the weasel family, is
endangered.Credit
Daniel J. Cox/NaturalExposures.com
Judge Prods Wildlife Service on Protection for Wolverines
HELENA,
Mont. — Because it depends on heavy spring snowpack to excavate dens
and safely raise its young near the top of mountain peaks high in the
northern Rockies, the wolverine is on the front lines of battles over
the effects of climate change.
There
is less snow in the Rockies these days, and researchers forecast that
in the coming decades, the wolverines in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming may
disappear with the snowpack. Only about 300 of the animals are in the
lower 48 states. In 2014, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service refused to list the animal for endangered species protection, calling the science inconclusive.
The
debate over protection for the reclusive animal, the largest in the
weasel family, has been going on for about 20 years, and it was revived
this week by a federal court ruling here in Montana.
Chief Judge Dana L. Christensen of United States District Court for Montana on Monday rebuked the agency in a lengthy court decision,
citing the “immense political pressure that was brought to bear” by
Western states on the question of whether to list the wolverine, rather
than relying on sound science. The states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming,
along with the petroleum industry and other groups, have opposed
granting the wolverine the designation of a threatened species.
Judge
Christensen ordered the agency to go back and reconsider its reasoning
under the Endangered Species Act. (During the trial, the judge noted
that he had seen the elusive animal three times.)
“No
greater level of certainty is needed to see the writing on the wall for
this snow-dependent species standing squarely in the path of global
climate change,” Judge Christensen wrote. “It’s the undersigned’s view
that if there is one thing required of the service under the E.S.A. it
is to take action at the earliest possible, defensible point in time to
protect against the loss of biodiversity within our reach as a nation.
For the wolverine, that time is now.”
Photo
Wolverine tracks in a snowfield at Glacier National Park. There are only about 300 of the animals in the lower 48 states.Credit
Lauren Grabelle for The New York Times
The decision not to list, the judge wrote, “was arbitrary and capricious.”
But Dan Ashe, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service,
adamantly denied that the decision was based on anything but science.
“I cannot disagree more strongly,” he said. The judge “made a sweeping
statement about political interference for which there is not a shred of
evidence.”
The wolverine is a cryptic, reclusive animal, he said, and definitive science is lacking. In February 2013, the agency proposed listing the wolverine as a threatened species, a lesser designation than endangered.
But
Mr. Ashe, in describing the service’s decision in 2014 against
protections for the wolverine, said: “We were presented with
inconclusive scientific information and decided against the listing. The
wolverine is not at risk of extinction, which is different than saying
the wolverine is not going to be affected by a changing climate.”
Still,
scientific experts and environmental groups who filed the lawsuit said
they were dismayed that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision
appeared to be political and welcomed the judge’s decision.
“It’s
not just a win for the species, but a win for science,” said Matthew
Bishop, a lawyer for the Western Environmental Law Center here, which
challenged the decision on behalf of 22 groups. “Five papers said
there’s a significant connection between wolverines and climate change
and not a single one suggested there isn’t. They chose to disregard the
science.”
There
is a disagreement about the impact of climate change on wolverines, but
“instead of having a debate, the tactic they chose was to discredit the
science and the scientists personally,” said Jeff Copeland, a former
wolverine biologist for the Forest Service and one of the researchers on
key papers about the relationship between wolverines and deep snow. He
now does research for the Wolverine Foundation.
Existing
research on the animal is clear, he said. “Wolverines don’t reproduce
in the absence of snow,” he said. “Climate change is going to have a
real impact on wolverines.”
Sign Up for the Science Times Newsletter
Every week, we'll bring you stories that capture the wonders of the human body, nature and the cosmos.
Wolverines
raise their young in dens they dig deep in the snow in an ecological
niche between rock and ice and the tree line, tunneling and living down
there with their cubs until about the second week of May. While much is
unknown, experts say that as the snow season grows shorter, the
wolverine may no longer be able to den and reproduction will most likely
decline.
The
genetic variability in so small a population is also a concern. Other
threats include trapping. As a scavenger, the wolverines often gets
caught in traps set for other animals, and Montana would like to allow
trappers to take the animal.
Wolverines
are also sensitive to intrusions in the high country by recreationists,
especially with snowmobiles. Some snowmobile groups have opposed
protections out of concerns that they will block access to the
backcountry.
Mr.
Copeland said that he was working on a wolverine project in the Teton
Mountains of Wyoming, where recreational use is heavy, and a team had
only been able to trap one male, even though there were as many as eight
or 10 animals there not long ago.
The
wolverine, sometimes referred to as the mountain devil, is a
one-of-a-kind creature, earning respect and admiration from those who
study it. Males weigh less than 40 pounds, but are extremely fierce,
often fight well above their weight, and have been known to kill an
adult bull moose.
“They
have an insatiable need to keep moving,” Mr. Copeland said, and they
wander wide in their search for food across the rocks and snow of the
mountains, sometimes traveling as much as 25 miles in a day.
“The
wolverine is a tremendous character,” wrote the naturalist Ernest
Thompson Seton in the 1920s, “a personality of unmeasured force, courage
and achievement.”
On February 1, in the snow-cloaked reaches of the northern Cascade Range in Washington, John Rohrer and Scott Fitkin cracked open the lid of a log cabin-shaped trap and, with a jabstick, anaesthetized the snarling wolverine within.
Once the animal had fallen unconscious, Rohrer, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, and Fitkin, a district biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, worked quickly. The two scientists and their crew measured and weighed the wolverine, photographed its teeth and chest markings, and gave it a shot of penicillin to fight infections. They monitored its vitals; if its body grew too hot, they were ready to tuck snow into its armpits. Most importantly, they fitted its neck with a radio-collar containing a satellite transmitter, whose readings would provide crucial information about the animal’s movements.
We worked with the U.S. Forest Service last week to trap and satellite-telemetry-equip the first study animal of the 2015 season of the ongoing North Cascades Wolverine Research project to learn more about this elusive species. Our Okanogan district wildlife biologist Scott Fitkin says the new 30-pound male wolverine, coming out the trap near Easy Pass in this video by David Bowden of USFS, might be the new dominant male in the heart of the study area, since “Logan” dispersed last winter.
Forty-five minutes later, the wolverine sprang from the trap with a throaty growl. Fitkin, watching the 30-pound mustelid bound into the wilderness, wondered if there was perhaps a new sheriff in town. “It was clear he’d been around for a while, and he had a pretty big frame on him,” Fitkin recalls. “We thought, okay, this might be the region’s new dominant male.”
Even 20 years ago, a flourishing wolverine population would have seemed unlikely in the North Cascades. The creatures were eradicated from Washington by the early 1900s, the victims of trapping and poisoning. In the 1990s, however, tracks and camera traps began testifying to their renewed presence. Keith Aubry, a scientist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, became convinced that the recolonization was worth studying. In 2006, Aubry and his team collared a female named Melanie and a male named Rocky — the first two wolverines ever monitored in the Pacific states, and the initial study subjects in what was to become a decade-long, 15-wolverine tracking program.
Aubry’s first task was to figure out where the immigrants were coming from. He initially assumed they’d wandered west from the northern Rockies, where a few hundred wolverines roam Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. But DNA testing suggested that the northern Cascade colonists may have had a very different place of origin: the rugged coastal mountains of British Columbia. Washington’s wolverines, it appeared, represented the southern vanguard of a Canadian population, which was now recolonizing the species' historic Pacific Northwest range.
Wolverines have slowly begun to recolonize the northern Cascades. Camera trap photo courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In fact, all the western United States' wolverines may come from Canadian stock. Last year, Aubry and colleagues published a continent-wide analysis of wolverine genetics, which suggested that Gulo gulo had been completely wiped out from the contiguous United States by the early 20th century. America’s wolverines, then, likely descend from British Columbia and Alberta migrants, which began trickling down into the Lower 48 once the persecution ended.
America’s wolverines are, therefore, a remarkable wildlife success story, and their dispersal abilities an illustration of why habitat connectivity matters. In 2008, an Idaho native dubbed Buddy rambled 500 miles into California’sSierra Nevada, where the creatures once flourished; the next year, a wolverine trekked from Grand Teton toColorado. Wolverines hadn’t been spotted in either place since before the Great Depression.
Though the northern Cascades’ twenty-odd wolverines haven’t meandered quite that far, at least five different animals have wandered south of State Highway 2. Only one wolverine has been detected beyond I-90, but biologists hope that a series of wildlife underpasses and bridges — some completed, others planned — will allow the carnivores to someday make the trip. “How this is going to play out, where it’s going to end, is still an unknown,” says Aubry, whose tracking project is finally concluding this year. “This is essentially a giant regional experiment.”
No wildlife management story would be complete, however, without an ironic twist. Even as wolverines’ immediate prospects look bright, their long-term prognosis remains worrisome. The mustelids famously raise their kits in snow dens, selecting sites where snowpack lingers well into spring; such sites will almost certainly become more scarce as the climate warms. One 2011 study, also co-authored by Aubry, suggested that suitable wolverine habitat “will likely be greatly reduced and isolated” by the end of the century.
Despite the alarming forecast, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently declined to list the species as threatened, citing scientific uncertainty about whether the disappearance of snowpack will truly limit the animals’ population. A consortium of environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the decision in November 2014.
Ultimately, the wolverine’s greatest foe may be our cognitive dissonance around global warming. “A lot of people say that it doesn’t make sense: ‘You’re saying climate change is a big threat, yet they’re currently expanding their range?’” Aubry says. “But these processes are happening on completely different temporal scales.” For all his success, the North Cascades’ new dominant male — and the rest of the country’s wolverines — may still be waiting for the other climatic shoe to drop.
Ben Goldfarb is a Seattle-based correspondent for High Country News.
The National Wildlife Federation's (NWF) South Central Regional office, located in Austin, TX seeks a qualified, highly motivated individual to …more
Residential Ranch …
Southern New Mexico - Spanning 72,000 acres of private, public, & conservation land this rural community includes 34 custom homes, miles of trails, …more
Stephen is a Senior Directing major at Carnegie Mellon. He is also the current President of Carnegie Mellon's Film Club. He recently completed his Thesis Project within the School of Drama: a production of Mac Wellman's "A Murder of Crows." He is currently working on creating a collective of Film Enthusiasts across Carnegie's Campus as well as other colleges and universities around Pittsburgh. You can find out more about Stephen and his talk on his website: www.stephentonti.com or follow his blog "Caffeine, Nicotine, and ADHD: a guide to maintaining sanity."
