Tucker speculated that the wolverine may have come from Montana, and noted a March report from a Hingham-area rancher of a wolverine traveling across a stubble field.

“It could be the same individual -- it’s not often for these things to take off across the prairie. The fact one was seen in northeast Montana before one turned up here, the odds are greater it’s the same individual than two individuals at the same time,” Tucker said.

If it is the same animal, it traveled more than 350 miles in a little fewer than two months, but wolverines are no stranger to long-distance journeys.

Researchers tracked a lone male in 2009 as it traveled more than 500 miles from northwest Wyoming to Colorado, making it the first wolverine documented in that state in nearly a century.

In another well publicized case, a wolverine detected in 2008 on a motion activated camera in California was the first documented since 1922. DNA analysis linked the animal to a source population in Idaho, about 500 miles away.

Biologists plan to take a DNA sample from the North Dakota wolverine with the goal of determining its source population, but no DNA was gathered from the Havre-area animal to compare.