https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.inforum.com/news/4022974-wolverine-shot-north-dakota-first-confirmed-sighting-late-1800s&ct=ga&cd=CAEYAioTNTA4MjUwNTg4MTE0ODQ4MTczMjIaYjg4MTYyM2YwYWMxMzkxNDpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNFf7wMdwOaLDI4LJFXfo8jYuX4nrg
Jared Hatter of Alexander, North Dakota holds up the wolverine he shot near there on April 24,
Wolverine shot in North Dakota is first confirmed sighting since late 1800s
ALEXANDER, N.D. — For the first time since the late 1800s, a wolverine has been confirmed in North Dakota“This is the first verified report of a wolverine in the state in modern times,” Tucker told the Herald. “We get reports from time to time, and this is the first one we’ve been able to verify.”
The largest members of a scientific family that includes fishers, weasels and badgers, wolverines are known for their elusive, solitary nature and extensive home ranges that often cover hundreds of miles. Adult males can weigh anywhere from 24 pounds to nearly 40 pounds.
According to reports, a ranch hand shot the animal April 24 after spotting it harassing cattle. Tucker said wolverines are listed in North Dakota as furbearers with a closed season, but state law allows them to be killed if they’re threatening livestock.
In this case, she said, a warden’s investigation concluded the ranch hand who shot the animal was within his rights to do so.
Robert Seabloom, a professor emeritus of biology at UND and author of “Mammals of North Dakota,” said to his knowledge there hasn’t been a verified wolverine record in the state since the 1850s. Wolverines traditionally inhabit forested areas, although they occasionally make prairie travels.
“Alexander Henry and other early fur traders did take them along the Red River and in the Pembina Hills area in the late 18th and early 19th century,” Seabloom said in an email. “Also there may have been a sighting in the (Killdeer Mountains) in the 19th century.”
The wolverine shot last week was a young male. Tucker said the carcass of the animal as of Monday morning still was at the district Game and Fish office in Williston, but once it’s taken to Bismarck, department staff will conduct a necropsy -- basically the animal version of an autopsy -- to collect DNA samples in an effort to determine its origin, do some basic disease testing and gather more information about the wolverine’s age and diet.
“This definitely will be the first time I’ve ever handled or seen a wolverine, so it will be interesting,” Tucker said.
The closest known wolverine population is in Glacier National Park in the northern Rocky Mountains, Tucker said, and breeding populations also are found in northern Canada. Tucker said there was a report in March of a wolverine spotted near Havre, Mont., and she speculates it’s the same animal shot last week in western North Dakota.
“We get reports of wolverines from time to time, and the first thing in my mind is, let’s make sure it’s not a fisher,” Tucker said. Fishers are expanding in North Dakota as far west as the Missouri River corridor, Tucker said, but after seeing photos, she knew the animal was a wolverine.
“If I had to guess, I would anticipate this would be a subadult or young adult male wolverine,” she said.
Seabloom said he suspects the wolverine was dispersing in search of a new home when it came across the rancher’s cattle and the encounter that led to its demise.
“Hard to say how he got there,” Seabloom said. “They are known to travel long distances cross country, but I think it more likely he could have followed the Yellowstone or Missouri rivers out of Wyoming or Montana.”
John Erb, furbearer biologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in Grand Rapids, Minn., said there is no evidence of a breeding wolverine population in Minnesota, and he believes it has been more than 50 years since the last verified sighting in the wild.
Erb said a wildlife manager in northwest Minnesota received a photo and video last fall of an animal that clearly was a wolverine, but it wasn’t confirmed the images were verified as being from northwest Minnesota.
“Nothing seemed suspicious -- just that we like to verify the site,” he said.
Erb said he also has corresponded with a Manitoba biologist who confirmed there have been a couple of verified wolverine sightings in southeast Manitoba in the past year.
“It does appear to be a little more wolverine ‘action’ in the past year or two, but certainly no evidence of breeding in Minnesota,” Erb said.
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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiu8YC-0b_MAhWIPCYKHZajDe4QFggrMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Frobertlindsay.wordpress.com%2Fcategory%2Fanimals%2Fwild%2Fmammals%2Fcarnivores%2Fmustelids%2Fwolverines%2F&usg=AFQjCNESQ4h0ns5AFOmUX_QYtfbg70OOywWolverine history in the Upper Midwest
There have been a number of unverified sightings of wolverines in North Dakota in the past two decades. They are listed in my report, Wolverines in the Upper Midwest, available here. This is the most detailed report on wolverines in this region on the Internet. Be sure to check it out if you are interested in the subject. It has lots of great photos of the areas in which wolverines were spotted and the general terrain of the region.
It also links a number of other reports I wrote on other parts of the US. I broke the Western and Central US into several zones of one or more states and then discussed the status and recent sightings of wolverines in that area. I also included a lot of photos of the locales where the sightings took place.
The last wolverine recorded in the state was from 1870 when a wolverine was poisoned by a hunter named Henry Bennett at the mouth of Cherry Creek near the Killdeer Mountains. Curiously, that location very close to where the current specimen was taken. There were 36 known records of wolverines taken in North Dakota, but none of them were verified. 35 of these are from a single locale, a fort at the mouth of the Pembina River in the northeastern part of the state. These records are all from the journal of a single fur trapper from Montreal,Alexander Henry the Younger.
Henry’s journals date from 1801-1806 when he worked as a fur trapper for the Montreal-based North West Company. During this period, Northeastern North Dakota had not yet been settled by Whites, so his records would seem to be a good record of the wildlife presence and density in this region pre-contact. At this time, the land was the territory of Dakotas, but Chippewas and Crees were also in the area.
He lived for most of the time at a fort at the mouth of the Pembina River. In those five years, Henry reported that 35 wolverines were trapped in eastern North Dakota alone.
The USFWS regards these records as possibly spurious since they nearly all came from a single person, and it is uncertain whether these records were of wolverines actually taken in North Dakota or whether these were animals taken elsewhere and transported to the fort. However, a closer look at Henry’s journal shows that he was reporting exact locales where his trappers were taking wolverines. He listed a variety of locales, all in eastern North Dakota. The theory that some or all of these wolverines were trapped outside of North Dakota and brought to the fort seems incorrect.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) says according to the known habitat associations of the wolverine in the US, North Dakota never housed a population of established wolverines during historical times.
However, this conclusion may be erroneous, and wolverine biologists think it is incorrect.
The USFWS also says that the entire area of the US Northeast, Great Lakes and Great Plains never had an established population of wolverines. However, biologists reported that two juvenile wolverines were taken in the Diamond Lakes area of New Hampshire in a single year, 1918. The biologists felt that the taking of two young in a single year meant that a breeding population of wolverines may have been present at that time. The current theory that the Northeast never had an established population of wolverines is incorrect.
Dr. Keith Aubry, one of the nation’s top wolverine scientists, said that if those 35 specimens were all taken from eastern North Dakota in a five year period alone, then that implies that there was a resident population of wolverines in eastern North Dakota at that time.
The question here centers around the question of what one means by established population. To wildlife biologists, established population means breeding population, and the USFWS argues that the Upper Great Plains does not have suitable habitat for breeding wolverines due to the lack of deep snow cover into the late spring.
The FWS also argue that wolverines cannot live in this region because summer temperatures are too high.
However, a wolverine recently lived for 5-10 years around the area of Ubly, Michigan where summer temperatures rise to 82 degrees, close to the 85 degrees found in Alexander. But the Ubly story is complicated by other factors. That animal had been live-trapped by someone in Alaska, brought to Michigan somehow and released near Ubly. A man who had set up the camera-traps that were photographing the animal was also feeding it regularly, so this is not pure case of a naturally dispersing wild animal surviving on its own, and this animal may not have been able to survive there on its own.
Based on this data, the Summer Temperature Theory about wolverines may be wrong. Aubry acknowledged that wolverines can live in areas where the summer temperatures get up to 80-85 degrees, but they do not live well or thrive in these places.
Based on the number of reports coming in of wolverines not only from North Dakota but also from elsewhere in the Upper Midwest and the long historical record of sightings in this area from the 19th Century, the Great Plains was definitely wolverine habitat pre-contact and even for a period of time after contact before they were possibly extirpated by the fur trade or even more likely by a warming climate, which is the theory that Aubry favors. The reason that the prairie may not be habitat now is because of the assumption that lacks the deep snow persisting into late spring required for breeding wolverines.
Although the prairie seems to be an odd place to have wolverines, when you think about the great herds of buffalo that used to roam here, perhaps it is not so strange after all. Aubry agreed that the Great Plains would have been perfect habitat for wolverines due to the huge herds of buffalo that would have provided a ready source of large amounts of carrion that would be perfect for a scavenger like a wolverine.
He also said that it was much colder in the US in 1800 than it is today because that was during the tail end of a several centuries-long Little Ice Age where temperatures dropped all over North America. Since then, the continent has been slowly warming up, a process that has much accelerated in recent days, and what may have been cold enough for wolverines in 1800 is much less suitable habitat now that it is much warmer. Aubry said it may well have been cold enough in North Dakota in 1800 to sustain the snow conditions necessary for wolverine breeding.
He also noted that Canadian scientists say there has been a retraction of the wolverine’s range in Ontario over the past century or so. Whereas once wolverines occurred throughout the province from north to south, they have retreated north and are now found only in the northern half of Ontario. Aubry felt that the retraction of the wolverine’s range from the northeast, the Great Lakes and the Great Plains was probably more due to warming climate than to overtrapping and poisoning. “The wolverine may have been one of the first victims of global warming,” Aubry said.
My post on wolverines in the Upper Midwest has a number of photos of prairie terrain and habitat along with some theorizing on how and why the prairies may have been good habitat for wolverines pre-contact.
Among nearby states, wolverines were last recorded in Indiana in 1852, Wisconsin in 1870, and Minnesota in 1918.
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