![]() ![]() Conversely, the park has about 300 grizzly bears – another solitary species not known to exist in large densities. Glacier national park in northern Montana, for example, has some of the lower 48’s best wolverine habitat and is currently home to around 50, said Jeff Copeland, a longtime wolverine researcher and board member of The Wolverine Foundation. Wolverines never roamed the west’s mountains in high numbers. “I think that there’s some truth to that.” A curious carnivore “People talk about wolverines as being the embodiment of wilderness and that if there are wolverines, there are good wilderness areas still around,” said Eric Odell, species conservation program manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The question of how much humans should intervene in the wolverine’s future will come to a head later this year when the US Fish and Wildlife Service faces a deadline to decide – finally – whether the species need federal protections.Ī mountain wolverine in the Tahoe national forest near Truckee, California, spotted in 2016. Other researchers say wait and let them wander. While wolverines may excel at the occasional walkabout, some researchers say the animal needs help re-establishing in remaining viable historical range like the mountains of Colorado and California. ![]() But the climate crisis looms over the snow-loving species, as do threats from backcountry recreation encroaching further into their habitat. Thanks to environmental efforts in recent decades, today there are around 300 animals occupying pockets of Montana, Idaho, Washington and Wyoming. Wolverines had largely disappeared from the contiguous US in the early 1900s as a result of poisoning and drops in big game populations. ![]() These are hopeful signs for a creature that, despite a century of challenges, remains a symbol of wildness in the American west. Recent documentation of a male wolverine in California – another state that hasn’t had a viable population since the 1920s – along with other isolated sightings, emphasizes the fact. M56’s journey into Colorado, a state where wolverines hadn’t been spotted in more than a century, proved that male wolverines could cover significant ground. There he spent a few years looking, presumably, for a mate, before turning back north, walking hundreds of more miles and getting shot by a ranch hand in North Dakota. The wandering male with stubby legs embodied all the elusive mustelid’s personality traits when it trekked hundreds of miles from north-west Wyoming through desert and sagebrush sea to Rocky Mountain national park in central Colorado. ![]()
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