Karl Puckett

kpuckett@greatfallstribune.com

Four Rocky Mountain states are joining forces to study the wolverine population across the region in an effort that also will help identify possible reintroduction areas and travel corridors between mountain ranges, with researchers planning to use trail cameras and DNA to identify the elusive critters.

“It doesn’t occur that often that four states start to think about managing a species together,” said Bob Inman, carnivore and fur bearer coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “The biology of the species demand it because there’s so few and they’re spread across such a big area.”

The study, which will begin next winter, is the first attempt to define the current distribution of the wolverine across its entire range in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington, Inman said.

Trail cameras and copper brushes like those used to clean gun barrels will be placed at trees at bait stations, including locations along the Rocky Mountain Front and in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and island mountain ranges in northcentral Montana such as the Little Belt Mountains.

While the cameras will photograph the individuals, the bear-like mountain carnivores will leave behind hairs and DNA samples when they brush against the copper brushes as the climb the trees.

“It will be a one-time shot where we’ll have 180 of these stations deployed across the four states,” Inman said.

Rarely seen by humans, the bushy-tailed “mountain devil” with large feet and claws moves effortlessly through deep snow and steep terrain.

Scientists observed one radio-collared individual travel 6.8 miles in four hours, gaining more than 2,000 feet in elevation to summit an 8,000-foot mountain in Montana’s Glacier National Park.

“The hard part is getting back into the backcountry and even wilderness where wolverines live,” Inman said of studying them.

The work must be conducted in the winter when bears are hibernating otherwise the bears would eat the bait set out for the wolverines.

Researchers will travel into the backcountry to set up the equipment and then collect the pictures and hairs for the DNA samples.

“We’ve gotten some external funding to try and document where wolverines are — or are not — in those four states, how far they’ve recovered from historical lows at the turn of the century about 1900,” Inman said.

The four states are receiving $600,000 in funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. A big focus will be gathering baseline population data to show whether it’s stable, declining or increasing.

By the early 1900s, wolverines were almost wiped out in the Lower 48 by hunting, trapping and poisoning.

They’ve made a comeback with an estimated population of 250 to 300 in the four states, including roughly 150 in Montana. That’s a small number, Inman said, but there’s no reason to believe the population was higher historically. Even in Alaska, where human influence is minimal, wolverines live in low densities and reproduce slowly.

“There just aren’t many around,” Inman said.

Today their cold and snowy habitat is threatened by climate change, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited warming temperatures in a proposed listing in 2013.

Females excavate elaborate birthing dens in the snowpack high in the mountains, choosing areas where snow persists through the denning season.

In 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew the proposed listing after concluding the effects of climate change were not likely to place the wolverine in danger of extinction.

Defenders of Wildlife sued the agency, and U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen sent the issue back to the Fish and Wildlife Service for additional consideration of listing where the issue remains today.

“The wolverine’s sensitivity to climate change, in general, cannot really be questioned,” Christensen said in his ruling, noting that the counsel for Defenders of Wildlife described it as a “relic of the northern hemisphere’s last ice age” during a hearing. “In fact, many believe, similar to the polar bear, that the wolverine may serve as a land-based indicator of global warming.”

The four-state study is a proactive effort by the states to conserve the species that was in the works prior to the court decision remanding the listing decision back to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Inman said.

“I wish the public understood better the state agencies are actively pursuing the things we can do for wolverines on the ground and that listing wolverines as an endangered species is not really going to change that,” Inman said. “Listing is just something that occurs on paper. Without the on-the-ground work we feel we’re already doing it’s kind of pointless.”

About a year ago, representatives from the states began discussing what could be done for wolverines and hammered out a study proposal, he said.

They approached the issue as if they were writing a recovery plan for a threatened or endangered species and asked themselves what that plan would require.

Issues that came up were the importance of habitat connectivity and population monitoring, and the possibility of wolverine reintroductions to areas with enough habitat.

“We’re identifying places that are good habitat that don’t have wolverines so we might be able to put them there to increase population size,” Inman said.

No reintroduction proposal is in the works at this time, Inman said. But he says policies should be developed for reintroducing “candidate species” for listing as threatened or endangered that have not actually been listed, such as the wolverine, Inman said.

“It’s one of these species that’s not controversial like wolves or grizzly bears or something like that,” Inman said. “People are not concerned with wolverines out there on the ground. Most people find them kind of fascinating.”

About five years ago, discussion occurred about reintroducing wolverines in Colorado where they’ve been gone for a long time, Inman said. The biggest impediment was the fact that they were under consideration for listing as threatened or endangered. People don’t mind having wolverines in the woods, Inman said, but not if land-use restrictions come with a listing, he said.

Young wolverines cross valley bottoms between mountain ranges looking for their own space, and the study also will look at identifying places where they would most likely travel from one mountain range to another, Inman said.

“That’s a really critical thing for this species,” Inman said. “When you’ve got five or 10 wolverines in a big mountain range they are probably closely related and they need to disperse out and find genetically unrelated individuals to mate with. That’s why we’re trying to identify those areas whey they are most likely to cross a valley bottom.”

Using radio telemetry locations of wolverines collected in the past, Montana State University will assist the states in identifying connectivity areas between mountain ranges.

The states will come up with a map of wolverine habitat that will be useful for land trust organizations working with private land owners on conservation easements to prevent development, Inman said.

For the study, wolverine habitat has been divided into grid cells in the four states.

How many wolverines live in places such as the Rocky Mountain Front or Bob Marshall Wilderness isn’t known, Inman said.

“It appears to be good habitat but because of its remote nature it’s never been determined how many wolverines might be in there,” Inman said of the Bob.

Follow Karl Puckett on Twitter @GFTrib_KPuckett.

Wolverine facts

• In the winter, wolverine primarily scavenge dead animals, with their summer diet consisting of smaller mammals such as porcupines, hares, marmots and ground squirrels. They can take down larger animals when circumstances such as deep snow are in their favor.

• Wolverines do not hibernate. They have extremely dense fur, large snowshoe-like paws that allow them to stay on top of deep snow, and crampon-like claws that enable them to climb up and over steep cliffs and snow-covered peaks.

• It’s the largest terrestrial member of the family Mustelidae. Adult males are 26 to 40 pounds and adult females, 17 to 26 pounds.

• Each foot has five toes with curved, semi-retractile claws used for digging and climbing.

• Wolverines are found in the North Cascades in Washington and the Northern Rocky Mountains in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Wyoming. Individual wolverines have also moved into historic range in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, but have not established breeding populations in these areas.

• Wolverines are called “skunk bear” by the Blackfeet Indians.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Defenders of Wildlife