Pound for pound, the Wolverine is our most ferocious and strongest native carnivore, capable of standing its ground when confronted by Grizzly Bears, Gray Wolves and Pumas..........And yet, as strong and capable an animal as they are, Wolverines are our most fragile and threatened carnivore, truly intolerant of warming temperatures and most likely unable to persist around human land alteration and recreational pursuits like snowmobiling and backcountry skiing.................."Fifteen years ago in 2002, two pairs of Wolverines(two males and two females) called the Grand Tetons(adjacent to Yellowstone) home, the southernmost breeding population of Wolverines documented in the USA"..............."One of the pairs mated and had two female kits"................."In 2015, 13 years later, there is no evidence of any of those 6 Wolverines alive in the Tetons"........WHY?............."Wolverines are climate-sensitive"............ "They are tied to cold and snowy landscapes in many ways"............... "South of 54 degrees latitude, they invariably den and raise their young in caves under deep, persistant Spring snowpack"............"Climate modeling suggests that late spring snow will decline by up to 60% in the US northern Rockies over the coming century, potentially knocking wolverines out of their strongholds in the Lower 48"........."The Wolverine Winter Recreation Project, which ran from 2009 to 2015 and encompassed wolverine habitat from the Payette National Forest to the Tetons in Greater Yellowstone revealed that wolverines become more wary of recreation the more they see of it". ............... "Most recreated areas in the western US are used repeatedly by multiple people, which means that for a resident adult wolverine, there is no such thing as a single, isolated encounter with a skier or a snowmobiler". ............."Might the synergy of sparse snowfall and recreation cause the wolverine to blink out forever in the USA?????.

http://mountainjournal.org/trying-to-save-the-elusive-wolverine

Whither The Mighty

 Wolverine?

THE CHARISMATIC MOUNTAIN MAMMALS 

FACE A LIST OF THREATS: CLIMATE CHANGE,

 DEVELOPMENT, OUTDOOR RECREATION PRESSURE

 AND ACCIDENTAL KILLING BY TRAPPING. CAN 

THEY SURVIVE?

by Rebecca Watters

10/22/17

Wolverines epitomize the paradox of a wide-ranging species that, compared to other carnivorous wildlife, exists in low densities and scarcity of numbers. Across all of the American West in the Lower 48, there is guestimated to be only a few hundred wolverines left.

Wolverines are climate-sensitive. They are tied to cold and snowy landscapes in many ways. South of 54 degrees latitude, they invariably den in spring snow. This is likely only one of many ways in which wolverines strategically use a cold, snowy landscape, but it’s the one that’s received the most attention over the past several years, since it’s tied to the petition to list wolverines under the Endangered Species Act.

Climate modeling suggests that late spring snow will decline by up to 60% in the US northern Rockies over the coming century, potentially knocking wolverines out of their strongholds in the Lower 48. As the southernmost reproductive population node in the Lower 48, the Tetons may be experiencing warming effects that make the range less hospitable to wolverines than it has been in the past. The narrative here is about wildlife vulnerable to climate change, a force that is currently largely outside of our control, but that still demands our attention.

A second possible issue is recreation. Despite claims that wolverines are highly sensitive to the presence of people, there’s no conclusive evidence yet that this is true. But there’s also no evidence that it isn’t. Snowmobilers and backcountry skiers are reaching ever remote corners of Greater Yellowstone and like a lot of things in times of budget cuts hampering official government research, absence of scientific evidence does not equate to absence of impact.

Map of present suitable wolverine habitat versus likely outlook in the 21st century as warming average temperatures reduce mountain snowpack. It means providing refugia where wolverines are free from disturbance will be even more important. Map use courtesy American Museum of Natural History

Finally, it’s possible the absence of wolverines from the Tetons may be part of a natural cycle of recolonization and local extinction that characterizes meta-populations.  This we know: it can take the loss of a single wolverine—half a mating pair—to effectively extirpate the species from a mountain range. Woverines are vulnerable to traps set for wolves and other animals. Average temperatures are rising and snowpacks that provided terrain conducive for wolverines is in decline.  Along with it, population projections suggest more people entering the backcountry in coming decades.

With islands of habitat (mountain ranges) interspersed among wide swaths of non-habitat (lowland), juvenile wolverines must cross inhospitable landscapes to reach places that can support them. The chances of any mountain range receiving both a male and a female wolverine in a given stretch of time probably varies with proximity to the nearest occupied mountain range, development in the intervening lowlands, and natural obstacles to travel.

THE YELLOWSTONE/GRAND TETON ECOSYSTEM(RED ARROW)

We have almost no concept of how connectivity functions, what the timelines are for these local extinction and recolonization dynamics, or how human land use affects both wolverine behavior and connectivity. These are questions that bear further, and careful, investigation.

THE TETONS

Development, recreation, and climate change represent a toxic mix for many species. Cumulatively, they may be too much for wolverines and for other wildlife.

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http://www.roundriver.org/wolverine-named-olive/

A Wolverine Named Olive

WHAT HER STORY AND THAT OF OTHERS TELLS US ABOUT THE IMPACTS OF RECREATION ON SENSITIVE SPECIES

by Rebecca Watters, Mountain Journal MARCH 29, 2018

The Wolverine Winter Recreation Project, which ran from 2009 to 2015 and encompassed wolverine habitat from the Payette National Forest to the Tetons in Greater Yellowstone, was one of the largest wolverine collar studies ever conducted in terms of the logistics, the number of animals collared, and the datasets generated.

It produced probably the single largest dataset on motorized and non-motorized winter backcountry recreation in the U.S., with skiers and snowmobilers carrying GPS trackers to document 5899 adventures. Twenty-four wolverines also carried GPS collars, generating fixes every 20 minutes on weekends, when recreation activity was predicted to be high, and again at midweek, when recreation activity was predicted to be low.

This extraordinary effort offers a complex picture of wolverine response to winter recreation. The results don’t provide a simple answer to the question of whether recreation harms wolverines, but rather illustrate where and how wolverines will feel the effects of recreation.

Heinemeyer says the study shows three key things:

One, that resident wolverines establish and maintain territories and reproduce in recreated habitat, including in heavily recreated regions like the Payette Forest.

Two, that at the home range scale, wolverines avoid both motorized and non-motorized recreation.

Three, that wolverines avoid recreation along roads, and also dispersed recreation, but that they most strongly avoid dispersed backcountry recreation – motorized and non-motorized alike.

This suggests that wolverines are not so incredibly sensitive that a single, isolated encounter with a skier or snowmobile will traumatize them, yet it also suggests that recreation at a certain intensity will exclude a wolverine from portions of its own territory – potentially substantial portions.

The study’s female wolverines avoided between 2% and 28.4% of their own territories due to recreation; the percentages could trend much higher looking at only the highest quality habitat within a territory (Olive avoided 24.5% of her entire territory, but 72% of the highest-quality habitat within her territory). Effectively, recreation in a wolverine’s territory reduces the quality of the habitat within that territory.

The results also show that a wolverine will more strongly avoid recreation the more it is exposed. In a response that is the opposite of habituation, wolverines appear to become more wary of recreation the more they see of it. Higher levels of recreation therefore create a greater negative impact. Most recreated areas in the western US are used repeatedly by multiple people, which means that for a resident adult wolverine, there is no such thing as a single, isolated encounter with a skier or a snowmobiler. The study showed that wolverines’ tolerance of some levels of recreation may create a problematic sense of complacency because it fails to account for how wolverines are likely to respond to increasing exposure to recreation over time and across space.

Almost all backcountry recreation in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming occurs in wolverine habitat, and with the human population in the region growing, and snowpack declining in the face of global warming, more and more recreationists will likely be using the places wolverines depend on.

A recent Canadian study (https://academic.oup.com/beheco/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/beheco/arx182/4844878?redirectedFrom=fulltext) suggests that wolverines also avoid roads, and in the meta-population structure that we find among wolverines in the Rockies, development in valley bottoms that aren’t wolverine habitat could still impede connectivity among population nodes in different mountain ranges.