The End of the World As We Know It

Since the Mayan apocalypse is due to hit on Thursday (or is it Friday?), I figure I should get at least one more post out before we are all (possibly) wiped out. Just in case we aren’t, and you are interested in volunteering on a post-apocalypse wolverine project, the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness in Idaho are looking for people to help them run live traps and cameras this winter. Information can be found here.

The first recorded case of rabies in a wolverine has been documented in Alaska, and an article on the Alaska Fish and Game website provides a thorough explanation of the circumstances. The female wolverine was carrying a strain of Arctic fox rabies and apparently fought with and infected a wolf shortly before she died (she also had a goose egg in her stomach, proving once again that wolverines are indeed versatile in their eating habits.) The incident is notable because it represents a first instance of recorded infection in a species, but the article is worth reading for its deeper exploration of rabies epidemiology in Alaskan fox species, the relationship between rabies outbreaks and ecological processes, and the possible connection between climate change, displacement of Arctic foxes by red foxes, and a potential related change in rabies prevalence.

Several interesting reports and papers have come out over the past few weeks – the 2012 report for the North Cascades Project was released, as well as the most recent update to the Idaho Recreation study. Both are available at the Wolverine Foundation website. And a new paper from Sweden looks at habitat selection in areas where lynx and wolverine overlap. I have not yet had a chance to read through all of these in detail but will report back once I do – provided, of course, that we have not met with fiery doom in the meantime.

 

 

 

 

Volunteer Opportunities For Winter 2012-2013

Wolverine field season is approaching, and there are a few opportunities for people who are interested in volunteering and/or helping out.

In Canada, Wolverine Watch is looking for backcountry athletes to participate in tracking, and is asking for reports of track and/or wolverine sightings in Banff, Yoho, and Kootenay National Parks. There’s some more information here, including information on how to contact project director Tony Clevenger if you want to volunteer.

In the US, Cascadia Wild, based in Portland, Oregon, is offering wolverine tracking workshops on Mt. Hood this winter. Contact information for registration is here.

The Friends of Scotchman Peaks’ on-going wolverine monitoring project is up for funding from Zoo Boise again this year, and they are seeking votes in order to win a grant. You can vote for them at the Zoo Boise site; the deadline in October 28th.

We are still seeking reliable reports – preferably with documentation – of wolverines throughout Wyoming, to gain a better understanding of their distribution in the state. You can report those sightings either here, or by contacting the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative. Laminated pocket-sized wolverine track ID cards will be available this winter at the NRCC office for skiers who want them.

There will doubtless be other opportunities in the US Rockies this winter, so keep in touch with your local conservation organizations. Wolverine “citizen science” is all the rage these days, so there should be plenty of chances to get out and track. (And if anyone wants to make the wolverine-interested public aware of specific programs, let me know; I’ll post them.)

Wolverine weather has descended on the West, and I’ve been caught up in recovering from what we sometimes refer to as “reentry shock,” that annoying process of waking up each morning and remembering that you’re supposed to be speaking English instead of Mongolian. I’ve had some good wolverine-related adventures in the past few days, though, and should be back to updating this blog soon.

Wolverine Birthday Contest, and News Briefs

Wolverine Birthday is coming up on February 14th. This is the symbolic birthday of wolverine kits around the world, although in reality, of course, wolverine births range from January to March. Valentine’s Day makes a good reference point, though. I admit to a certain bias, but the birth of wolverine kits seems way more interesting than a fat little cupid and some chocolate. So to encourage Gulo fans around the world to broaden the celebration of love to include love for all species, I’m challenging readers to come up with ways to celebrate Wolverine Birthday in addition to Valentine’s Day. I’ll be hosting a Wolverine Birthday Party, which will include only foods that wolverines eat. Salmon, elk, and berries will be on the menu, and we’ll have a screening of Chasing the Phantom for an audience that hasn’t seen it before.  If you are also celebrating Wolverine Birthday, let me know how. You could even combine the two holidays, for example by creating a wolverine dinner date – climb or ski to the top of a snow-clad peak, and dig a week-old elk haunch out of the snow (only try this with someone you’ve been seeing for a while, and only if they have a sense of humor.) Or maybe just ski in wolverine habitat and see if you find any tracks. I leave the creativity to my readers. If you do decide to do something, leave a description of the event as a comment. The most creative endeavor will win a piece of original wolverine artwork. You have until February 21st to post your story.

In wolverine news, the most recent update for the Central Idaho Wolverine and Winter Recreation study is now available. The project is in the middle of its third field season, after two highly successful years collaring wolverines on the Payette, Boise, and Sawtooth National Forests.  Their rates of trapping success, particularly of denning females, leaves me envious and in awe. I haven’t participated in this project, but I’ve kept track of it from afar, and I am continually impressed not only with the number of wolverines that they monitor, but also by the fantastic support of the recreation community and local businesses. The report includes a couple of great images, including one that amply illustrates the use of sub-snow downfall at a denning site.

The tracking workshop hosted last week by Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation and Wild Things Unlimited seems to have been a success; they found tracks and collected DNA, reaffirming that citizen science can be valuable to research efforts. It was inspiring enough for a post and description by one enthusiastic participant. Wolverines are converting people at a pretty rapid clip, which provides an opportunity (for awareness-raising, for conservation, and for research) but also a potential liability (one of these days, I’ll get around to writing about the way in which charismatic species are the fossil fuel of the conservation movement….)

Canadian papers are picking up a story - three months after the fact – about a wolverine using a highway overpass in Banff National Park for the first time (these overpasses are landscaped and pretty posh, as far as wildlife crossings go.) Nine wolverine crossings have been recorded at nearby underpasses, but this is the first use of an overpass. The underpass crossings seem to have picked up over the past two years.  In the article, researcher Tony Clevenger states:

“We don’t know a lot about wolverines, but we do know there’s a learning curve, which we’ve seen for grizzly bears and black bears as well…Perhaps this is what we’re seeing, that it’s an initiation of a learning curve, that they’re starting to figure out what these things are and starting to use them.”

This made me start to think. We’ve “seen” wolverines following other wolverines around in GPS and telemetry data, and  scent marking might help wolverines navigate the landscape. If wolverines follow the scent-trails of other wolverines, scent-marking a route across an overpass or underpass might encourage wolverines to use the structure more quickly. Of course, acquiring wolverine scent would be tricky, so maybe this isn’t such a brilliant idea. But I’m betting that now that one wolverine has crossed, others will follow with increasing frequency, if there are others in the area.

Speaking of dispersal, High Country News published a thought-provoking piece about the popularity of corridors in conservation discourse, and the very real challenges to actually protecting them. I am a  landscape ecology geek and I love all of the thinking that goes into figuring out sizes of protected areas, island biogeography, and the configuration of dispersal corridors, but….I also worry that in taking an approach that relies heavily on technical problem-solving, we’re ignoring the bigger issue of how we relate to landscape and development. Maybe the focus should not be on setting aside limited areas for wildlife dispersal. Maybe the emphasis should be on setting aside limited areas for development instead, so that we maintain a permeable matrix of natural landscape by which human settlements are surrounded, instead of the other way around. (Yes, yes, I know I’m a raging idealist in addition to being a geek.)

That’s the wolverine news for early February. Looking forward to hearing how you celebrate Wolverine Birthday.

Wolverine News and Volunteer Opportunities

A quick review of wolverine news over the past week, as well as a volunteer opportunity for the coming weeks:

Wolverines made the news in Calgary, Canada, with a short video piece on a study of the impacts of the Trans-Canada highway on the species. The segment contains some photos of camera-trapped wolverines, and highlights a different camera-trap method from the one employed by Audrey Magoun in Oregon.

Earlier this week, I had an interesting conversation with Forrest McCarthy, who is the public lands director at Winter Wildlands Alliance and who has worked with several wolverine projects in the past. He pointed me to two interesting sites.  Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation is an organization dedicated to combining adventure in the wild with intellectual stimulation and exploration. In association with Wild Things Unlimited, ASC is hosting a wolverine and lynx tracking workshop from February 3-5.  Information is available here; at last glance, they still had room for volunteers. The work will take place on the Gallatin and Helena National Forests and requires solid backcountry skills.

Forrest also suggested that I check out Bedrock and Paradox, a blog maintained by Dave Chenault, who works with the ongoing Glacier National Park DNA and camera study. Some of the entries deal with the wolverine work (the most recent here), and the rest with interesting questions about outdoor gear and existential crisis (not necessarily always linked….) He’s a good writer and an interesting thinker, and since Doug Chadwick doesn’t have a blog, this might be the best way to keep up with events in Glacier gulo land.

The Idaho Panhandle wolverine project has stepped up its PR with regular blog updates every Wednesday – be sure to check these out, as they also offer the opportunity to keep up with an on-going project, as well as  insight into such esoterica as how to deal with a gigantic shipment of skinned beavers. Another account is available from the Idaho Conservation League. All of these pieces on wolverine work are heartening; it’s great that people are so inspired.

Finally, here’s an article from the New York Times on why introverts need solitude in order to do their best work. Is this related to wolverines? Kind of, because wolverines are the Solitary Creature par excellence, and, as a raging introvert, that’s one of the reasons I fell in love with them immediately. I’ll avoid the very long exploration of these connections and my own personal feelings about people who don’t understand the introvert mode of creativity, but suffice to say that this is on my mind because I’ve been having some issues (from the time I first went to kindergarten right on up through last week….) with people who think that doing good work and being a decent human being rely on formulaic group interactions and enforced collegiality. For people who truly are introverts, the choice is clear: do mediocre work by engaging in these enforced situations and keeping your own impulses suppressed, or do brilliant work by embracing the gulo model of existence and scaling the peaks that need to be scaled. I am not a creature of the lowlands, and I am not a herd animal, so I really appreciate public attention to this issue of different ways of getting things done. I know that associating this issue with wolverines is purely totemic, but once in a while it’s okay to admit that our fascination with the natural world is about the reflections and lessons that its features (and creatures) invoke.

Wolverine Publicity in the Tetons and Beyond

Outdoorsman and mountain adventurer Forrest McCarthy has posted an account of six years of work on the Teton wolverines. McCarthy refers to his time on the Teton projects as “the best job I ever had,” and offers a great selection of stories and pictures. Also in the blogosphere, the Adventure Journal has a tribute to the toughness of wolverines, based on the recent study by Bob Inman of WCS.

Audubon magazine has posted online a story that they ran in print back in 2008. When I began this blog, in 2009, this article was one of the few popular-press items ever written about wolverines. We’ve come a long way in building awareness in the space of four years.

The Spokesman-Review offers an article about the wolverine research in the Selkirks, which, as of last week, camera-trapped its first wolverine of 2012. The article gives a well-deserved nod to the 40 (!) volunteers who showed up to participate in the research training. Citizen scientists are essential to so many of these projects, and the degree of interest is again indicative of growing awareness of the species.

Finally, for Colorado residents who are particularly interested in the Mongolia wolverine work, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is offering a talk on Mongolian wildlife research on Wednesday, January 18th. As far as I know, the talk will not focus on wolverines, but it will feature “remarkable tales of fermented mare’s milk, wild gerbils and hamsters, efforts to save the very endangered Gobi bear, an unexpected run-in with local shakedown artists, and bad combinations of snow in July and unreliable Russian vehicles….” The fermented mare’s milk, the shakedown artists, the unexpected snow, and the unreliable Russian vehicles all suggest that if you are interested in what wolverine research in Mongolia entails, you’ll get a pretty good picture from this talk. The lecture starts at 7:00, at the Gates Planetarium; admission is $10.

And for those who can’t get enough of Mongolian wildlife, check out this short film on Mongolian marmots. Marmots are of cultural importance and, by all reports from Mongolian hunters and herders, are most likely an important food source for Mongolian wolverines as well as Mongolian people. (Be forewarned that this film contains images of people butchering a marmot, which is tradition in Mongolia but may be upsetting to some audiences.) Thanks to the folks at Boojum Expeditions for bringing this to my attention.

A Pictorial History of the Mysterious Wolverine

The only obvious thing about wolverines is the fact that they have always been – and still are – mostly a mystery. Wolverine biologist Jason Wilmot recently unearthed three images spanning the early decades of natural history, and they neatly summarize how little was known about the animal at the time.

The first dates from 1797; the “wolverene” looks like a striped possum, with the anatomically mystifying distinction of having four digits on its front paws and five on the back:

The second, three years later in 1800, features a “glutton” standing in docile profile:

The third, from 1828, reaches for scientific classification but places the wolverine, along with the badger, in the bear family – Ursus gulo and Ursus meles. The mistake, in the early days of taxonomy, is understandable. (Viverra, by the way, is a genus of civet.)

These pictures arc across a particularly interesting moment in the history of science and biology. During the eighteenth century the Enlightenment and the printing press had fueled the advent of the Age of Reason, an exploration of the natural world, and a turn towards systematizing knowledge and inquiry. By 1797, the giddy early days of this new way of seeing the world had given way to the chaos of the French Revolution, the final death knell of the old European model of kingship-by-divine-right and the accompanying assumption that the Catholic church and religion had the power to explain everything in the universe. As the nineteenth century began and the European encounter with the rest of the world’s cultures and environments escalated through colonial expansion into Asia and Africa, a much broader swath of the world’s species (extant and extinct) came under the gaze of the new and systematic European methods of inquiry and explanation. In 1828, a young Charles Darwin had just abandoned his original program of medical study to indulge a passion for natural history. At the time that the writer and illustrator of the above image was proposing that gulo and meles belonged among the bears, Darwin was in his second year at Cambridge, where his father had sent him to become a pastor after he neglected his medical studies. Instead, Darwin took up what was then referred to as ‘Natural Theology,’ and three years later he stepped aboard the Beagle. In 1859, On the Origin of Species rolled off the printing presses and propelled biology into a new era.

The images above, apparently plates from books, were acquired as prints, without context, so I don’t know where they came from or who created them. The ferment of ideas about the natural world that the authors, illustrators, and readers doubtless contemplated remain fun to think about; at least the wolverine was present among these discussions, even if in slightly misshapen representation. Maybe, during those days at Cambridge, Darwin paused for a moment to look at a picture of the ‘bears,’ and wonder how they came to look so different.

Here’s an image to wrap up this digression into the history of science and bring this post into the present – the most recent camera check from the Idaho panhandle camera trapping project yielded their first wolverine of the season, in the Selkirks! This is great news, and in light of the images above, the accompanying blog’s implied disappointment that we don’t know the gender or identity of the animal is somewhat moderated. In two hundred years, we’ve progressed from not knowing what the animal looks like or what family it belongs to, to being disappointed not to know the identity of specific individuals. In the history of the wolverine’s place in science, that seems like pretty good progress.

As a postscript, wolverine image-making has progressed into an entirely new realm with the news that Cass, the wolverine at the Billings Zoo in Montana, has taken up abstract painting. Self portrait? Attempt to categorize his own knowledge of humans? Or simply an expression of his desire for a piece of steak, the usual reward for his work? Two hundred years from now, maybe the field of animal-created art will look back to its beginnings in the early 21st century and express amazement at how little we understood of what animals wanted to tell us. Then again…maybe he just wants the steak.

Wolverines in the New Year

Just in time for the new year, the January 2012 issue of Smithsonian features a short piece about Keith Aubry’s work in Washington, briefly documenting the adventures of the Cascades’ contingent of wolverines – Xena, Rocky, Chewbacca, Melanie, and Sasha. These wolverines have huge territories, among the largest ever reported for North American wolverines. The article suggests that in two possible mated pairs, the females have larger territories than the males (Xena covers 760 square miles to Chewbacca’s 730, and Melanie defends 560 square miles compared to Rocky’s 440), which seems the inverse of the usual observation that male territories are larger than female territories. The usual ratio is roughly two female territories to every male territory, which means that two (or sometimes more) females share a mate. The researchers haven’t proven that reproduction is occurring in the Cascades, so these animals, even if they overlap with each other, may  be young animals still exploring the world and not yet defending a true territory. Or we may simply not know enough to make any kind of generalization about how female and male wolverines behave when they are in different environments and circumstances.

So what else does the new year hold for wolverines? 2012 will see more wolverine studies in more locations in the US than ever before – long-term monitoring of wolverines in the Greater Yellowstone region continues for the animals originally collared by the Absaroka-Beartooth project, and for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s wolverines. Round River Conservation continues research on the interface between wolverines and winter recreation in Idaho, expanding the study from McCall to Stanley and Fairfield, while further to the north, Idaho Fish and Game, in collaboration with various conservation organizations, launches a second season of camera-trapping for wolverines in the Selkirk, Cabinet, and Purcell ranges. In Oregon, Audrey Magoun and the Oregon Department of Fish and Game are constructing camera trap bait stations across the Wallowa mountains for a second season of work that will hopefully reveal a resident population; the three males photographed this past spring represent the first documentation of wolverines in the range, and if the cameras capture a nursing female this year, it will be the first evidence of a breeding population in the state since the species was declared extirpated in 1936. A camera trap project in Oregon’s Cascades will seek to document wolverines further to the west, while the Cascades Carnivore Project monitors wolverines (among other species) in the Washington Cascades. This means that at least eight projects (there may be more; I’m not sure about the status of the Glacier National Park DNA and camera study) are working on wolverines in the US. Internationally, Canada, Sweden, and Norway continue research on wolverines, and 2012 will see the set-up of camera traps in Mongolia.

2011 was a big year for wolverines. The momentum from the 2010 listing decision and the attention from the PBS wolverine documentary and Doug Chadwick’s book contributed to an increase in public awareness of the species. The discovery of wolverines in the Wallowa mountains in Oregon generated excitement. The launch of three non-invasive, camera and DNA-based studies – one in Oregon, one in Glacier, and one in Idaho – point to the new direction that wolverine research is taking: easier on the animal, and (somewhat) less labor intensive for the people, who have known from the beginning that trying to keep up with this animal is an impossible aspiration.

For me, the year began in Cambodia, contemplating ways to mitigate climate change effects, proceeded to Mongolia for a summer of tracking wolverines through the Altai and Sayan mountains, and wound down in Oregon, where I was privileged to have the opportunity to participate in the Wallowa work. I hope that the coming year holds just as much adventure for everyone, and that 2012 is full of good things for wolverines, wolverine researchers, and wolverine fans everywhere. Thanks to the blog’s readership and to everyone who supports wolverine research and conservation, and Happy New Year!

Vote for Idaho Wolverine Project

Friends of the Scotchman Peaks, in partnership with Idaho Fish and Game, conducted wolverine surveys in the Selkirk and West Cabinet mountains of Idaho last year and plans to do so again this winter. Last year’s project yielded camera trap images of at least one gulo in the Selkirks, and tracks of another in the West Cabinets. This winter, the coalition will expand to include the Idaho Conservation League, and research sites will be located across the Idaho panhandle.

The project is up for funding from the Zoo Boise Conservation Fund, which will give a total of about $100,000 divided among four different organizations. The decision is made by vote, so this is an opportunity to show your support for wolverine research by casting a ballot for the project. You can vote here.

I don’t know anything about this project beyond what I’ve read on their blog, but given the difficulty of finding money for wolverine research, and given that any data on unknown populations is valuable, it’s worth showing support.

Good luck to the project, and I look forward to hearing the results of the study.

 

 

Wolverine Research on Idaho Public Television

In July, Idaho Public Television aired a piece on wildlife work in the state. The program includes a substantial segment (beginning about seven minutes into the show) on the wolverine- winter recreation research in the Payette National Forest, which is entering its third year this winter. Highlighting the day-to-day operations of the traps, the different skillsets required to make wolverine research run, and the personalities of the animals themselves, the piece gives a great overview of a wolverine research project. It includes some nice footage of wolverines running through the snow, stills from the project’s camera traps, and footage of a capture of a male (they say he was feisty; his faceoff with the researchers’ flashlight seemed fairly docile, although he definitely wasn’t happy about being dosed with the drugs.) If you’ve ever wanted to tag along on a wolverine capture but live in a place where there aren’t any wolverines, this film will give you a vicarious experience – without having to get up at 5 am, as the dedicated but bleary-eyed scientists and volunteers do in the show.

Once again, the Idaho Snowmobile Association deserves huge recognition for helping initiate this project and for their commitment to science and, as ISA rep Sandra Mitchell says in the piece, to not having a negative impact on wolverines. This project is an admirable example of different stakeholders working together in a constructive way – if we’re lucky, maybe it will serve as a model for future carnivore conservation endeavors in the West.

The one shortcoming in this piece is the failure to highlight the central issue of denning habitat. One of the wildlife biologists briefly mentions that female wolverines require deep snow through late spring in order to den, but if I had been setting up the narrative flow of the story, I would have structured it around this issue, since this is really the reason that there is concern about winter recreation in the first place. Disturbance to dens and reproductive females are the critical issues, and they are critical because the population reproduces extremely slowly (every kit counts) and they can’t reproduce at all without deep spring snowpack. As climate change potentially shrinks denning habitat, the issue is compounded and an understanding of the effects (or non-effects) of winter recreation becomes even more important.

Nevertheless, the program is a fun look at a great research project. Thanks to Idaho Public Television for bringing some attention to the gulo work going on in the state.

Idaho Snowmobile Study

A quick note from Ulaanbaatar, before I head back into the field: An article about the snowmobile study in the Payette National Forest in Idaho gives an overview of the study and a glimpse of some of the potential outcomes. All of the participants in the study – from the wildlife biologists to the snowmobile association representatives – come across as committed to good science, which is great news for wolverines (and for people who might otherwise be caught in an endless cycle of anecdotes and arguments about what’s really going on.)

The article concludes that since wolverines are currently inhabiting areas with winter recreation, wolverines may not be disturbed at all by snowmobiles and skiers, but this is probably a premature assessment. We can certainly hope that winter recreation won’t be a problem for wolverines, but we need to wait to see what the study says about the most critically important segment of the population, reproductive females, before we conclude that everything is fine.