To the Field

Some of our luggage – gear and food resupply bags.

It’s six in the morning and still pitch dark here in Ulaanbaatar as we stumble around doing a final count on bags and gear, packing stray items into bags to be left in storage here, testing the weight of our backpacks one last time. The van that will take us north to Murun will arrive in an hour. Due to the need to register our border permit, we are not yet sure whether we will set out from Ulaan Uul, in the Darhad itself, or from Hatgal, which is across the mountains on the edge of the Lake Hovsgol.

I will attempt to post our locations and send messages to my project’s facebook page and also to the tracking page attached to my Spot device, although both of these depend on finding a way to get in touch with the company, which has apparently locked my account because I tried to access it from Mongolia (this is the second time this has happened. For a global rescue service, this is a major flaw) so no one panic if messages and locations don’t show up. We should also be updating via satellite phone at the Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation page, rotating among the five of us over the course of the expedition. Through ASC, if you’re an educator, you can also find a curriculum that will help students follow the expedition and learn about wildlife in Mongolia. We’ll be back in Ulaanbaatar around May 1st, and I look forward to telling the story then.

I am nervous, but also really excited, and very grateful for the contributions of everyone who helped make this happen: to National Geographic for funding this expedition, to Gregg Treinish and Forrest McCarthy for the hard work of organizing, route-finding, and figuring out what it takes to get five people on skis across 400 miles of mountains; to the numerous sponsors who have donated gear and food; to Jim Harris, our photographer, for being willing to come with us on short notice, carrying additional weight in camera equipment; to my many Mongolian friends, who have taught me the language and helped me to understand what wildlife means to people here; to everyone who reads this blog and has been supportive of my work in the US and in Mongolia over the past six years, particularly the Mongolia-Bozeman community, and the wolverine research community (because without the background they provided and the support for my previous trips around Mongolia, we wouldn’t even know where to survey intensively for wolverines in Mongolia, let alone have a context in which to make what we find meaningful); and especially to Jason Wilmot, who first told me back in 2006 that there was an unstudied wolverine population in a country that I knew and loved, and thereby sparked a seven-year effort (and counting….) to bring knowledge of that population to light – and who has come back here for a second trip despite the manifold quirks and discomforts of the first.

See you all in May, hopefully with some great wolverine stories, or, failing that, at least some great ski stories.

 

 

The Expedition Begins

The week before any trip to Mongolia, I start to exist in a liminal space, in which time and outlook are skewed, a bubble that encompasses the place where anticipation, nostalgia, and panic crash into each other with unrepentant ferocity. I love Mongolia, I love my research, I love adventure, but there is a significant inertia that drags at me with the demands of having to reorganize my cultural mind, my primary language orientation, my living arrangements, and my entire social life. During this liminal week, I develop a subdued sort of hedonism that is entirely absent from my life at any other time. I voraciously eat fruits and vegetables; I soak in the bathtub for hours, reading The New Yorker; I dress in my fanciest clothes just to run to the grocery store; and I sleep, as intentionally as one can do anything while unconscious, luxuriating in a comfortable mattress, real pillows, and soft bedding. Baths, bedding, fruits and vegetables, and dress-up opportunities being substantially absent through most of Mongolia, I guess that these small indulgences are reasonable, but in the 48 hours before leaving, they assume a disproportionate importance, as if I cannot possibly bear to leave them.

Then, somewhere in line at the airport, usually after I’ve cleared security, the switch flips and the liminal space retreats into the distance and I’m fully engaged in whatever adventure I’m embarking on.

This morning at 4:30, reality hit in the Bozeman airport when I stumbled through the door and saw my fellow Mongolian Wolverine Ski Expedition team members hauling a mountain of bright red dry bags, ski bags, and backpacks towards a check-in counter manned by a woman who was trying to look stoic about the impending task of sorting through all this luggage. Suddenly I was elbow deep in energy bars and dehydrated food, sorting and rearranging weight, shifting heavy items to my carry-on bag, and desperately wishing for some caffeine. On the ride to the airport, I’d stared out at the lights of town and thought, “I cannot believe that we are really doing this. What the hell possessed me, to think that skiing 400 miles across northern Mongolia in spring was a good idea?” By the time the plane took off and my fellow team members – wolverine biologist Jason Wilmot, adventure geographer Forrest McCarthy, and Gregg Treinish, director of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation – pulled out maps of the Darhad, we were so elated about the prospect of the trip that bleary-eyed passengers requested that we tone it down, 6:00 a.m. being apparently too early for proximity to unfettered enthusiasm.  Still, the switch had been flipped, from backward-looking to forward-looking, from anxiety to excitement.

 

Wolf Pack, Wolf Skin

On Friday, the Mongolia ski expedition team set out for a shakedown – a trial run to test equipment, fitness, and group dynamics. It’s the first time all of us have been together since we started planning this trip more than a year ago; I spent the summer in Mongolia, and team member Forrest McCarthy has been in Antarctica all winter. Expedition organizer Gregg Treinish, of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, and I are both based in Bozeman, and Jason Wilmot, who is based in Jackson, has been through town a couple of times, but we’d never all been in the backcountry, or even in a room, together. So when we convened in the midst of a snow squall in a parking lot at the Taylor Fork off of Gallatin Canyon, with a carload of brand new gear and a whole lot of expectations, I was nervous and excited. In less than three weeks, we’ll be setting out on a 350-400 mile loop of the mountains around the Darhad Valley in northern Mongolia. This was our opportunity to  figure out how we function as a pack.

Two straightforward admissions: I like wolverines because they reflect an independence of character that I think I possess. I’m not a creature of hierarchies or groups, I’m incapable of engaging in competition or dominance games (I just zone out or leave situations in which these things are important), and I know that working well with others is not always one of my strong points. And also, I have been worried all winter about being the only woman – and a small, lightweight woman who hasn’t been winter camping in 12 years  – among a group of incredibly fit, strong men who are backcountry experts. It’s one thing to carry a 50 pound pack when it’s 25 or 30 percent of your body weight; it’s another thing altogether to carry it when it’s 50 percent of your body weight. All winter I’ve been hauling bait and camera station supplies around the mountains, hoping that this would render me tough enough, but no matter how frequently I go out, I still end up exhausted after a few hundred yards of hauling a burden uphill through thigh deep powder. I consistently felt like a failure. The complex dynamics of working in Mongolia also weighed on my mind. I’ve set out to traipse through the mountains of Mongolia alone or with a few good friends, for work or for fun, dozens of times over the past 13 years, but I’ve never felt so responsible for the experience of people who, at least in the case of Gregg and Forrest, I don’t know that well, and who have absolutely no experience working in Mongolia or on long-term, community-based international conservation and research projects. So as we divided up the new gear and packed it into our bags, I was on the verge of hyperventilating. What if I couldn’t keep up? What if I wimped out in the cold? Worse yet, what if we all simply hated each other?

Gregg’s girlfriend was also along for the weekend, and she, Jason, and Forrest had all brought their dogs, so we were a big group as we embarked. We left a car at Taylor Fork and then drove north to set out from Big Sky. Our route would take us over approximately 25 miles of mountain terrain, over the course of two days. As we wound our way up into the mountains on the first evening, we left the well worn trail and pushed further up towards the passes that would lead us back to the Taylor Fork drainage. The pack didn’t feel anywhere near as heavy as I’d feared, although I was still behind – until we left the trail and set out over crusty, unconsolidated snow. The guys, along with our three canine companions, began to punch through the crust. I stayed on top and pushed ahead. Forrest, veteran of a zillion expeditions and instant source of calm confidence for anxious novices, neatly summed it up by pointing out that what might seem like a weakness can, in certain circumstances, turn into a strength. This is how wolverines take down moose and reindeer. My trepidation diminished.

We spent a spectacularly starry night testing our tents and bags, which were surprisingly comfortable and warm. The next day we headed up towards the first pass. The sky was clear, Lone Peak arced up into the blue with breathtaking grace, and it was pure exhilaration to be out, with mountain peaks on the horizon in all directions. With the guys still punching through the crust and with me lagging on the uphills, though, we were concerned that we might have to turn around, but Gregg encouraged us to push on towards our original goal. It was a long day, with multiple tumbles on my part down steep slopes as I adjusted to the new skis. Jason and Forrest are both amazing to watch on skis, fearless and elegant, with their dogs bounding just ahead or behind. I am a lot less graceful, and it took some time to get used to the kicker skins and the weight and balance of the new pack. We arrived at our campsite after dark, mostly because I’d been so slow on the uphills. Halfway through the day I’d started to run a strange fever, concentrated in my ear lobes and the lymph nodes of my neck, and had become unbearably dehydrated. I felt pretty awful by the time I crawled into my sleeping bag, though I hoped this was all just an adjustment and part of the learning process. My sister, who is a marathoner, has been a source of confidence and inspiration as I’ve prepared for this trip, and I fell asleep thinking of her advice about the mental and physical fortitude that it takes to complete these big endeavors: once you survive it once, you know you can do it again. I’d made it through day one. Everything after this was just another day.

Skiing from Big Sky to the Taylor Fork, testing gear, skills, and the fortitude of Montana’s amazing dogs. Photo by Forrest McCarthy.

Sure enough, the next day was easier, with the exception of an absolutely terrifying, steep,  icy slope that I felt like cursing with eternal damnation. But the clear skies, the great skiing through rolling meadows below, the abundant tracks of ermine, marten, snowshoe hare, and squirrels gamboling through the forest, and the mountain views more than compensated for the moments of doubt up on the steep pitch. Gregg’s encouragement to press on towards the Taylor Fork, Forrest’s consistent confidence, and Jason’s absolute competence in all things related to being out in the mountains, were reassuring, and all paid off. I’ve been out on research trips with guys who have constantly put me (and other female companions) down for lack of experience or strength, and this is my number one test of any men with whom I hike – do they try to make me feel bad? Do I, in turn, find myself wishing that one or more of them might conveniently fall off the nearest cliff? Despite very disparate personalities in the everyday civilized world, we functioned pretty well as a group in the backcountry. I still feel like the weak link, but as Jason pointed out, as the only person who speaks Mongolian and has connections in country, I will be the critical piece once we’re in Mongolia. So we all have our roles to play, and like any wolf pack, each member helps the whole to function.

By the time I got home, my face, hands, arms, and chest had broken out in hives and I was running a serious fever. My ears were so hot that they felt like they might combust, my lymph nodes were hard as rocks, my fingers were swollen and painful, and I had huge welts across my face. This morning, I went to the doctor, who said it was probably just a bad reaction to the sun. Later in the day I saw my Mongolian friend Badmaa, who is here in Montana on a Fulbright scholarship. She said that the condition looked to her like something that Mongolians refer to as huiten alergiin, an allergy to cold – she described the symptoms right down to the burning ears. And then she added that the other name for it, in Mongolian, is chonii hurgan, or “rough wolf skin” – a suitable initiation for a temporary transformation into a creature of the pack.

Wolverine Sighting in the Wind River Range, Wyoming

Studying wolverines in the Rockies can be almost unbearably frustrating. Gaining a picture of what is actually happening in a meta-population that is scattered across far-flung mountain ranges in at least four states is a mind boggling challenge. One of my enduring regrets is the lack of impetus for a state-wide study of Wyoming’s wolverine population. Our knowledge remains fragmentary, mostly centered on the two National Parks. We suspect that there are relatively few wolverines in Yellowstone National Park and the mountains to the east. The Wildlife Conservation Society monitored the population in Grand Teton National Park for several years, recording the southernmost known reproduction in the Rockies in 2005, and following one of the two female kits all the way to the Wind River Range, several hundred miles to the southeast. The WCS study stopped monitoring the Teton wolverines shortly thereafter, and since then there have been no formal studies of wolverines in Wyoming. We rely on anecdotal reports and, if we’re lucky, verified sightings by backcountry travelers. For the past several years, the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative has engaged in an on-going educational blitz to try to make skiers and hikers more aware of wolverine sign and the best way to record and report sightings. One of the centerpieces of this campaign was a laminated, pocket-sized card that adventurers could carry with them (a .pdf of that card is available from this page.) We distributed hundreds of these cards, but measuring their efficacy was tricky.

In late May, Brigid Mander, a professional ski writer (and friend) from Jackson who had been deluged with wolverine chatter from the NRCC crowd, headed into the Wind River Range for a ski trip. She and her companions became the first to document a wolverine in the range since 2006 (as far as I know.) This is pretty exciting. Hopefully we can find some way of conducting a more formal study in that range soon.

Here is Brigid’s account of the sighting:

We went into the Winds for a six-day couloir skiing mission at the end of May… It was more wintery than we expected, snow on the access road and the approach was easily skinnable form the parking lot, lakes were all still frozen. We didn’t really expect to see any wildlife, because it was so frozen and snowy. 

Things were going smoothly; and on our third day in there, we headed from our camp… over to ski some lines in a nearby basin. Just after we entered the basin itself, we saw tracks running along the lake – big tracks, with claws!  I suggested they were wolverine tracks to the crew, based on the ones I saw in BC in the McGregor range – these ones seemed quite a bit larger, but clearly had the chevron shape pad and giant claws (thanks to my handy NRCC card, which I didn’t have with me but had looked at quite a bit). However, no one believed me, and the general consensus was that it was a bear.  

 

Wolverine tracks in the Wind River Range, Wyoming. Photo by Brigid Mander.

Wolverine print with ski for scale. Photo by Brigid Mander.

Next, we saw a bunch of little tracks along with it, they didn’t look quite the same, but it looked like three more small animals I thought some looked distinctly canine – but it was hard to tell. They looked similar but we just weren’t sure. The crew decided now it was a mother bear with babies. Of course, there was no vegetation showing yet in the basin (or for miles in any direction, really!), and the lakes were quite frozen, so a bear heading higher and farther into a frozen wasteland seemed unlikely (but, no one had come around to my wolverine opinion…yet!). 

 

The tracks continued along the side of the lake, for over three miles to the end of the basin.  Here, the little tracks were gone but the big ones headed from the lake, and up around the back of the basin under a pass. They were going in and out the holes in the snow, next to huge boulders, checking out the deep windrifts created in the snow. It was very busy creature, and we saw its tracks everywhere – even up at the base of the couloir we went to ski.  

 

The weather, however, which had started out questionable in the morning, had turned hellacious, very cold, and extremely windy, and we were blowing over in our skintrack. The snow in the couloirs didn’t look great anyway. So we turned around after some discussion, and three of us were ahead of the others. 

 

We were still up high on the flank under the ski lines, and then down below us near lake levels we saw this creature running at top speed, looking like a frantic black bear – I felt bad for it, as it was fleeing and looked scared. But then I noticed a big tail, and could make out the wolverine stripe around its haunches – Simon skied after it to get a picture, and it sped away over the snow and then up into the rocks, where it stopped and turned around and looked at us from a distance. By the time we got under where it had run up to, it had disappeared somewhere. We were stoked! We had to admit that the sighting kind of made up for getting shut down on the skiing for the day. 

 

Wolverine in the Wind River Range, Wyoming. The animal is just visible at the center of the picture. Photo by Simon Peterson.

The next day we were back up, and we saw some more very similar, if a little older, tracks, all up there, high in the basin under the cliffs that the couloirs come out of. We didn’t see the wolverine again, for the rest of the trip, or any other wildlife for that matter. That is the story! 

Wolverine tracks showing the gait and scale. Photo by Simon Peterson.

Jeff Copeland in Couer D’Alene

Jeff Copeland will speak this Tuesday, April 12th, in Couer D’Alene, Idaho, about his research. The talk is sponsored by Audubon and begins at 7pm in the auditorium of the Lutheran church. An article on the upcoming talk and Copeland’s research can be found at the Spokesman-Review. (I, of course, am very excited to see that Mongolia made it onto the poster!)

A related article appeared in the same issue, about the possible impacts of wolverine sightings in the area where a snowcat ski company has been operating for the past few years. The young couple who own the company claim that they were assured that wolverine presence in the area wouldn’t be a problem for their permit when they bought the company in 2009, but the permit has since been revoked because of wolverine sightings. Although they are appealing the decision, they are unlikely to win.

This is a difficult topic. I’m sympathetic to people (especially people my age….) who have invested their time and money in pursuing a business that offers opportunities to get outside, and it’s terrible that they stand to lose that investment. They asked the right questions before they started. The assurances about wolverines not interfering with the permit were probably well-meant and may have been true at the time, but management has to change as our knowledge about a given situation changes. One of the more telling sentences in the article states: “Considerable confusion persists among land managers on interpreting rules regarding wolverines, which have been considered but not yet accepted for Endangered Species protections…” This is true: wolverines are a unique case right now, leaving us with a situation that is unfortunate for everyone – for business owners trying to make a living, for wolverine researchers trying to find funding to answer vital questions, for managers who might want the best for both wildlife and the human community but who can’t give assurances about the future of either, and, most importantly, for the wolverines themselves, who are facing down odds that they can’t comprehend, and which they can only meet with their indefatigable attitude….which, for the first time in their history as a species, may not be enough.

Land managers are taking a proactive, precautionary stance on trying to protect the species, and wolverines need that. The community of wolverine-interested people needs to be cautious, however, about rallying against back-country recreation. Endangered species protection in the Western US is overwhelmingly contentious. If you don’t live out here, it’s hard to grasp how deeply people’s identities – on both sides – play into the question of what we do about our wildlife. There are people who are primed to get riled about “federal interference” in their lives, and there are people who will passionately defend their right to speak “for” the species. The future of wolverines does not need to become a battlefield in this on-going war. Wolverines aren’t symbols of any political battle, and they shouldn’t become one. They’re outstanding and inspiring in a way that should reach anyone who loves being outdoors, whether on a snowmobile, a snowcat, or a pair of skis, whether as a hunter, a backpacker, or an artist. We’re all invested in the future of these places and the species they contain.

The situation in Silver Valley points most urgently to the need for more research to answer these questions in a way that leaves business-people less vulnerable, and managers more certain in their decisions and assurances. We need to figure out how females select denning habitat, to what extent they are disturbed by winter recreation, and what the implications are for management. Let’s get those questions answered, so that we know what we’re dealing with and what’s best for the future of the species and the people who use the habitat.

More Rosomaha

I came across another Russian blog featuring stories of wolverines in Kronotsky Zapovednik in Kamchatka. This one is by Alexey Bezrukov, who encountered a mother wolverine and three kits sometime in March. There are some incredible shots of the kits, variously playing with items, hanging out with their mom, attempting to raid a cabin, and investigating the camera. My favorite features a wolverine making off with an apparently hand-made ski – two items high on my list of great things that the world has to offer.

Bezrukov says that he first encountered these wolverines while out skiing. He saw a mother with one kit, and then behind them, two more kits. When the wolverines first spotted him, they dashed into a nearby alder thicket and hid. Bezrukov continued skiing, and, looking over, realized that one of the kits was running alongside him, looking at him. The wolverine kit looked thin, the fur not in good condition, but the other wolverines appeared healthy. All three wolverines seemed to be making an effort to get in front of him and look him in the face. He stopped, took off his skis, and got out his camera.

The wolverines circled around, but quickly grew bored with Bezrukov’s motionless figure. When they started to leave, however, he whistled, and one of them came back. It became interested in the skis, and dragged one off into the bushes. Bezrukov was so enthralled that he simply watched – until he noticed chips of wood flying off the front of the ski. At that point, he intervened to save his means of transportation. The wolverine, looking at him “with round hurt eyes, like a child with a favorite new toy taken away,” turned its back on him and left. He whistled after it, trying to make amends, but the wolverine was too upset (or had simply lost interest….) and disappeared.

But the little wolverine got over its pique, and Bezrukov and various guests saw the wolverine family again. One morning he awoke to a scratching noise, and found the wolverine pawing the window sill outside his cabin. He stepped outside to see the entire area around the cabin trampled by wolverine prints. Later, the mother and all three kits also came into the yard, providing entertainment for Bezrukov and friends, “not just allowing a short glimpse from far away, but coming close.” The wolverines even took up temporary residence under the guest house when the guests left, and began climbing a ladder to access the roof.

A few days after the guests left, Buzrukov noticed that two of his three snow shovels had disappeared. He spent some time searching and trying to figure out what his guests had done with them. The answer became clear when he looked out the window to see two wolverines playing with the one remaining shovel, dragging it off. Eventually they returned it, and, having learned his lesson, he thereafter brought his skis, shovels, and other equipment indoors at night.

I am not sure whether these are 2010′s kits, or 2011′s. If they were born in 2011, they are out really early and were certainly born before February.  They seem to be last year’s kits, traveling with their mom (or, if they are yearlings, possibly their father.) But in a few shots, they still look too baby-ish to be yearlings. The presence of three kits suggests – yet again, as did Igor Shpilenok’s story of six wolverines at a carcass – that Kamchatka is an especially favorable place for wolverines, supporting a high density of the animals and allowing, at least in some cases, higher-than-average reproduction.

Bezrukov’s first encounter with this family reminds me of Jason Wilmot’s story of his first encounter with a wolverine, which was remarkably similar; skiing in Glacier, he looked over and realized that a wolverine was running alongside him, looking at him. I’ve heard several similar tales from skiers, and a couple from paranoid snowmobilers who were convinced that the wolverine in question was attempting to kill them. Many stories of wolverines “chasing” people with aggressive intent exist, and these stories are reiterated in the comments on Bezrukov’s and Shpilenok’s blogs, which seem to reinforce a Russian perception that wolverines are vicious and dangerous (both authors, thankfully, quickly dispel these myths, and also refute a figure apparently circulating in Russia, that wolverines are detrimental to hunters, since each wolverine is reported to kill 150 deer a year -a figure that, as Bezrukov points out, is absurd.) Wolverines are curious animals, and most of these tales of being chased probably stem from startled people realizing that an apparently fearless animal is pacing them, looking them in the eye. Don’t worry, folks – they aren’t sizing you up for dinner. They are probably just saying hello.

 

Tracks!

On Saturday I went skiing in Death Canyon, and on the way down, took a detour to follow some interesting tracks. They caught my attention for a couple of reasons; the distinct and very regular 2x gait, and the trough through the snow.

The regular 2x gait and the trough around the prints prompted me to follow the tracks

They were clearly made by a medium-sized animal moving determinedly across the landscape. There aren’t that many candidates for tracks like these. They appeared too big to be marten, although in places the stride seemed short for a wolverine. I followed the tracks for about a mile; the animal would move rapidly across open spaces, and then duck under a grove of trees, look around, occasionally put its paws onto the snowy bark of a pine and, presumably, look up to see if there was anything to eat, before returning fairly quickly to its original course to the north, hauling across open meadow towards the next grove.  To the sides of the prints, on the edges of the trough, the drag marks of long fur were occasionally visible. On close examination, I could see claw marks at the front of the tracks, and in a few places, where I crawled under the trees to examine the tracks against harder snow, I could see imprints of widespread toes and, once, the impression of what appeared to be a chevron-shaped interdigital pad. Canid tracks have a distinct triangular shape, and if it had been a cat, the claw marks probably wouldn’t be visible. Odds were good that I was tracking a weasel.

Impressions of clawmarks and a widespread print indicate that this is not a canid or felid

I was at about 7100 feet, which seemed low for a wolverine, but not impossible, especially given the abundance of game at this elevation; squirrel and hare tracks were visible near the trees, and moose wandered the slopes. The 2x tracks eventually went straight up a steep, downfall-tangled hill; I followed them upslope just long enough to collect what I had been sure would show up eventually: scat. The scat was small too, but I tucked it into a folded square of paper and then headed back.

When I showed the photos to Jason on Monday, he ranked the tracks “probable” – too big for marten, all wrong for wolf. The only other possibility was an otter; the tracks weren’t far from Phelps Lake and Jason said that he’s seen otter tracks across high mountain passes miles away from water. But he also said that otters tend to place their feet directly beside each other, rather than offset in the way these tracks were. Hopefully we can send the scat to the lab and that might provide a more definitive answer. In the meantime, though, it was a good way to spend a Saturday in the Tetons.

Another single print - look closely, and the interdigital pad is almost visible

Tracks in the Tetons - to the left are the probable wolverine tracks, to the right those of Homo sapiens skierensis

Idaho Wolverine Snowmobile Study

An article about a wolverine study on the Payette, Boise, and Sawtooth National Forests appeared in the Idaho Statesman last week. The article is a straightforward synopsis of a project that asks backcountry snowmobilers and skiers to carry a GPS unit while using the National Forests.  There are questions about the extent to which snowmobilers and skiers might disturb denning female wolverines, and the researchers are interested in determining whether backcountry use really does present a threat. The question is made more urgent by the fact that the wolverine is up for consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act, and if that happens, land managers may have the latitude to make land use changes to remote backcountry in order to protect wolverines – if the researchers determine that human disturbance actually does result in den abandonment.

Snowmobilers, backcountry skiers, and advocacy groups all have a stake in the outcome of this study.  The script of the traditional Western endangered species conflict calls for outraged recreationists to accuse environmental advocacy groups and the federal government of infringing on their rights, while environmental advocacy groups evoke wilderness and science to enforce their aims, and the researchers remain stuck in the limbo of trying to maintain objectivity while taking shots from all sides. Wolves and spotted owls are probably the best examples of this predictable drama, which serves – over and over again, ad nauseum – as a proxy for deeply rooted values conflicts.

Hidden in the article, however, is a line that suggests that the wolverine case could turn out differently: “The study about wolverines is co-sponsored by the Idaho Snowmobile Association.”

In 2009, the Idaho Snowmobile Association approached the Rocky Mountain Research Station and asked to partner to research the effects of backcountry recreation on wolverines. Over the past few years, major environmental advocacy groups have intimated that wolverine safety is a justification for restricting snowmobile access to the backcountry. The vigorous debate over snowmobiles in places like Yellowstone has a history dating back to a time before wolverines were of interest to anyone, and from a certain cynical perspective, it’s easy to suggest that environmental advocacy groups perceive the wolverine as just one more piece of ammunition – a particularly charismatic cannonball, perhaps – to be employed in a battle that ultimately has to do with aesthetics. It’s worth reiterating that to date, there is actually no scientific proof that backcountry use results in wolverine kit mortality, despite the fact that certain groups are using that claim to try to restrict snowmobile access. On the other hand, the lack of proof doesn’t mean that backcountry recreation doesn’t have an impact on wolverines. Neither hypothesis (effect vs. non-effect) has been proven.  Scientific uncertainty over an issue in which two stakeholders with significantly different values have a stake in outcomes that are deeply tied to identity offers a recipe for contention. This is the point at which endangered species debates tend to get derailed into arguments over the accuracy of the science, rather than addressing those much more complicated underlying values conflicts.

This time, though, someone was smart enough to think ahead and at least narrow the margin of uncertainty around the science.  Snowmobilers are willingly taking GPS dataloggers with them into the backcountry to map their use patterns, while wolverine biologists are tracking instrumented animals. The study may not ultimately quantify, with absolute certainty, the effects of human activity on wolverines, but it will perhaps allow less room for speculative claims. With the backing of well-known wolverine biologists and the participation of snowmobilers and skiers, everyone has a share in the research and, to a certain extent, everyone owns the outcome. Whether this will make everyone more amenable to resulting management decisions remains to be seen, but this departure from the same old script is also an experiment well worth conducting.

The Wildlife Biologist Mystique

Last night Jason gave a wolverine presentation to a packed auditorium at the Teton County Library. Lydia and I counted 75 people before we got stuck in the utility closet by the press of the crowd and lost our line of sight and our ability to count. Jason talked for 45 minutes to an audience comprised of older nature lovers, young backcountry skiers, and wolverine enthusiasts who had turned out in solidarity with their species of interest. Even peering around the edge of the utility closet, it was possible to locate these guys; the ones who nodded their heads as Jason talked about wolverine characteristics that they identified with, the ones who were quick to offer comments that highlighted their own experiences with wolverines.  During the 20 minute question-and-answer session that followed the talk, several audience members shared their stories of wolverine sightings, and one woman, certain that she had seen the celebrity M56 during his trip to Colorado last year, told us she would drop by our office to give a detailed account. A second woman narrated her encounter with a wolverine in the Gros Ventres. This morning the phone rang early, a woman interested in reporting a possible sighting outside of Wilson, Wyoming.

Shortly before Christmas, I was talking casually with an acquaintance after an event and I mentioned our wolverine work. Two strangers, overhearing the word ‘wolverine,’ politely interrupted to tell me tales of wolverine encounters, one of them more than 20 years ago in the Cascades. Last year, buying skis for wolverine surveys, I mentioned the intended use of the purchase to the guy who was helping me choose my boots, and he and another salesman immediately began regaling me with their own epics (I say that with slight irony; I have some doubts that a wolverine really chased their snowmobile around, but it was a good story all the same, and I enjoyed hearing it.) In September, clearing brush from a conservation easement property in Massachusetts, where I was visiting my family, I mentioned my work to one of my mother’s fellow land trust officers and he had a story of having seen a wolverine in Minnesota as a boy.

As it turns out, nearly everyone has a wolverine story.

The accuracy of some of these stories is open to question, and if we are to use them for even quasi-scientific purposes, we have to be extremely selective about what we count as a ‘confirmed’ sighting. That’s why we’re training people to identify and record tracks in a reliable way. Beyond that, though, the sense of enthusiasm and camaraderie around this animal is intriguing and, to someone interested in the power of story, delightful.

Beneath the eagerness to share these stories is an eagerness – at times poignant – to be included in a conservation effort. I wonder what drives people to identify with a specific animal, or to be so insistent on sharing their story about that animal not only with a scientist who might have use for the information, but with an entire room full of strangers (or even one stranger at a reception.)  I wonder if it is, in part, the mystique and the romanticism surrounding wildlife biologists and their work.  The hard reality of that profession today is the fact that most of us spend most of our time in front of a computer, making models and wrestling with statistics, but the abiding image of the rugged loner spending all his time outdoors, communing with nature and majestic wildlife, prevails. I’m rereading Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, and I remember with each flip of a page how deeply that book resonated the first time I read it, around age 17, and how I wanted that life, of walking through the Himalayas and looking at wildlife and contemplating the mysteries of life in an idiom that offered deeper meaning than that of suburban Massachusetts teenagerdom. I craved that life, and I had no idea how to get there; remote Tibetan monasteries and being a wildlife scientist seemed equally exotic and inaccessible. And yet someone I ended up here anyway, along a convoluted path, certainly, and with a certain degree of sacrifice and existential crisis (it is still unclear to me whether I am more Peter Matthiessen or GS, more interested in the science itself or in the creative interpretation, the storytelling; or, indeed, whether I should just renounce it all and become a Buddhist nun.) But here I am, and I love it, and I am lucky to be as involved as I am, even if I do spend most of my time in front of the computer after all.

For people who haven’t had the opportunity to make their interest in wildlife into a career, the chance to share stories of a wilderness that they identify with and care about is, perhaps, a way of staying connected to that image, which is at heart also the image of the American origin myth: the pioneer crossing the frontier to which he will bring civilization, Adam in the untamed garden of Eden, surrounded by the innocent wilderness to which he will give name and moral order. These myths are two-edged and dangerous, but also deeply, deeply resonant in our culture. Perhaps at some level we all want to be that lone human figure who observes and, in observation, brings order – and the right to shape the story – to the observed universe.

The wolverine is the last of the charismatic large carnivores, now that bears and wolves have been named, observed, scientifically catalogued, and (tenuously) restored. It is a creature whose story in the wider awareness is still being shaped, and whereas we now know that bears and even wolves can survive on the margins of our questionable civilization, scrounging our garbage and breaking into our cars to raid our coolers, the wolverine is truly a creature of wilderness, primarily unobserved, inhabiting the last bastions of undomesticated North America. Maybe the wolverine represents our final chance to participate in the great American myth, and that is why everyone is so eager to participate in the shaping of the wolverine story.

Wolverines in 2010

Happy New Year!

Here in Jackson, we’re hoping to make 2010 a Year of the Wolverine. With funding for our citizen science project, we’re putting together a website and a backcountry wolverine track ID card to encourage reporting of wolverine sightings in the Tetons. We already have two talks scheduled here, and as I was putting up posters this afternoon, I was encouraged by the way everyone’s eyes lit up when they saw the picture of the wolverine. PBS Nature plans the release of a documentary on wolverines in March; I accompanied Absaroka-Beartooth field director Jason Wilmot and cameraman Bill Campbell on a test filming expedition for this documentary in 2008. Although neither Jason nor I appear in the film (thankfully, for my part),  Jason is the voice of the preview and we hope to host a couple of events on wildlife films in general and on the making of this film in particular. Also on the media front, The Wolverine Foundation website will be receiving a makeover sometime this year. We’re hoping to raise the profile of this fascinating animal without generating the kind of self-righteous, rectitude-based narratives that have plagued wolf and bear conservation efforts.

The wolverine listing decision of 2008, in which wolverines were deemed not warranted for protection under the Endangered Species Act, is due to be reconsidered this year after a lawsuit by a number of environmental advocacy organizations. If the wolverine receives protection, it will probably join the polar bear as a species listed due in part to its  vulnerability to climate change; since wolverines require deep spring snowpack to den, it’s a logical step to consider climate change a threat . Unfortunately, when the polar bear was listed the Bush administration issued a special rule stating that conservation actions can only be taken within the animal’s habitat. This means that even though an animal might be listed due in part or primarily because of the risks of climate change, the ESA can not be used to force legislation on climate change mitigation measures on a larger scale. So we might, for example, be threatening the polar bear or the wolverine through emissions, but even though we know this, we can’t use the ESA to push action on regulating emissions. Effectively, this conundrum has pulled the teeth out of the ESA in the face of a critical conservation problem. In the 20th century, the age of pesticides, development, and resource extraction as the primary environmental threats, the ESA was adequate to protect species. In the 21st century, where the conservation challenges are systemic, global, and threaten multiple ecosystems at once, we may have to rethink our approach. Perhaps 2010 will mark the beginning of a decade in which we are pushed to a new level of understanding of what will be asked of us to ensure the survival of high altitude, arctic, and boreal systems and the species that inhabit them.

On a more basic level, as of January 6th, the wolverine fur trapping season has been closed in two of Montana’s three trapping regions. In region 1, which has a quota of three animals, two animals were taken and the season closed; I’m assuming that this is because at least one of those animals was female, fulfilling a subquota that automatically shuts the season. Region 2, with a quota of one wolverine, was closed when a wolverine was taken. Region 3 is still open – this is the region in which two of our research animals, F3 and the Menan Male, live. I still break out in a cold sweat when I think about those animals in danger. Again, I recognize the importance of hunting and trapping to Western culture, but in this case the survival of the species takes priority.

The research project’s live traps reopened on January 6th after a holiday hiatus. Our field kit is ready to go, several bulky boxes occupying a substantial chunk of floor space in the office. When and if an animal goes into one of the traps, we’ll head up to participate in the collaring operation.

On New Year’s Eve, a sedate occasion which I spent in Ennis, Montana, with several friends, I had a dream (perhaps champagne-induced) that we discovered three wolverine dens. In the dream, we scrabbled down through the snow, digging out the kits, which were still half-white. The kits were small, but fierce, and the one I held twisted in my hands and latched onto my jacket and ran up to perch on my shoulder. There, instead of biting me, it balanced and, in the way of dream-creatures, spoke to me in a language that I couldn’t identify but nevertheless understood. On waking, I couldn’t remember what it had told me, but I maintain a sense of optimism. I hope that this year will hold dens, and kits, and perhaps the dream is a sign.

On the other hand, the dream also featured a swimming chicken, so who knows?