Break out the Champagne! (Tentatively….)

The sky finally cleared enough last week to get two flights into the air, on Wednesday and Saturday, and F3 was in the same location for both flights!

We’ve tentatively concluded that she is indeed localized and that this, along with evidence of pregnancy when she was caught in January, suggests that she has kits. The pilots observed a large number of tracks in the vicinity of the signal as well. With wolverines, assumptions can get you in trouble, so I’m trying not to invest too much in the idea of these kits until someone has actually seen them. But the evidence points to a new family of wolverines in the Rockies.

A field crew will ski in to investigate and perhaps set up a camera at the site. We probably won’t instrument the kits; the project is currently at a low budgetary ebb and we lack the funds to regularly fly and monitor kits, which would be necessary to gather the data that telemetry could provide. This is unfortunate, since dispersal is one of those critical parameters for understanding population dynamics, especially in this tiny population node at the very edge of wolverine range. A site visit and a camera will allow us to determine how many kits F3 has, and perhaps their sex, and may even offer some information on whether M57 is visiting the den, and how often.

I am simultaneously thrilled – we’ve been waiting years for F3 to have babies – and a little disappointed – I am currently out of the country and won’t be able to participate in the den visit. But the disappointment is all selfish, and the excitement is absolutely overwhelming.

Further exciting gulo news came out of Oregon today – after researcher Audrey Magoun tracked a wolverine in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon last week, her camera traps captured images of two individuals in the same area. Audrey and her husband have reset the camera stations to photograph the animals in a way that will allow them to determine the sex of the two animals.

After years of sighting reports from Utah, WCS did surveys last year and picked up tracks in the Uintas; the tracks looked like wolverine tracks, but they couldn’t confirm the ID. This winter, a Forest Service biologist found and documented a set of tracks in the Uintas as well, and the photographs suggest that Utah does have at least one wolverine after all. Where did this wolverine come from? This is one of the reasons we need the capacity to monitor kits.

Further to the north, in Canmore, British Columbia, researcher Tony Clevenger is gathering DNA samples by way of hair snares to study Canada’s wolverine population. Canada’s wolverine population is more robust than the population in the US Rockies, but Clevenger and his colleagues are trying to estimate population numbers and determine whether the animals are being affected by infrastructure development.

All around, it’s been a great week in the gulo world. Now I’m looking forward to hearing about the kit expedition, and having final confirmation that F3 and M57 have babies.  (By the way, do people really celebrate the birth of a human baby with champagne? Or is it cigars? Or something else? I can’t remember. In any case, I am proposing that the birth of wolverine kits be celebrated with champagne henceforth….)

Absaroka Beartooth Report

The Absaroka Beartooth Wolverine Project report is now available, documenting the methods and results for the 2005-2009 project in and around Yellowstone National Park. This is the project that initially captured and instrumented F3 and M57, and our on-going work is an outgrowth of those captures.

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (I am enough of a dork that I will indeed sit down and read 68 pages about a project with which I was involved on a daily basis, and I am even more of a dork in that I will enjoy doing so…) but I wanted to let the wolverine-interested public know.

I’ll write up a synopsis and analysis sometime in the next week or so, for those of you who are not dorks and have other things to do with your time. But to end on a dorky note, please note the beautiful three-by tracks captured in the cover photo, and the clear transition between a walking and a loping gait as the wolverine dipped down into the hollow between slopes. Fantastic!

Non-invasive Methodology from Glacier to Mongolia

A great article looks at a new non-invasive wolverine monitoring effort in Glacier National Park. This effort, combining camera trapping and hair snaring, is a follow-up to Jeff Copeland and Rick Yates’ years of research in the Park, which were cut off just when the data was getting good. The Glacier Park study still represents the best dataset on wolverines in the Lower 48 – and it’s given us some of the most epic wolverine stories out there, including M3’s ascent of Mt. Cleveland and F4’s feats as the matriarch of Glacier – so it’s good to know that further efforts to obtain information about the animals are underway.  The project seems to accept volunteers, too, so if you are in the Glacier area and want to participate in a gulo study, this may be an opportunity. (Note that there are currently more volunteers – 50 – than the estimated number of study subjects in the park – 40. This seems a particularly stark illustration of the scarcity of the species.)

Posts here over the past few weeks have been sparse, and the Glacier article is a good introduction to the reasons for the paucity of writing: it’s research proposal season. I’ve spent the past three weeks with my mind in a knot, trying to work out some tricky questions about how to best collect information on Mongolian wolverines without ever touching – perhaps without ever even seeing – a live specimen. The crux of non-invasive work  lies in figuring out how to study the species at low cost, with minimal impact on the animal, and in ways that are appropriate to the study site. The work in Mongolia will build on Audrey Magoun’s camera work in Alaska, which, in turn, probably helped inspire the Glacier work. Except we’ll be doing it in Mongolia, where wolverines have never before been studied in even a rudimentary way, where infrastructure is non-existent, and where human cultural factors add a unique twist to wildlife research. This is why the process of adapting the methods has been so time-consuming.

After a 2010 summer field season that was successful beyond anticipation (albeit stressful as well) as we interviewed herders and hunters and got some solid information on Mongolian wolverine distribution, I’m excited about the prospect of returning to Mongolia to begin camera-trapping and DNA work. But a number of big questions remain. Time constraints last year meant that I was only able to visit three of five potentially important wolverine areas in Mongolia, leaving two to cover in summer 2011. And then, a week after I returned to the US, I received word that a London Zoological Society wildlife camera-trapping effort had caught a mother wolverine and two kits on camera in a location that I hadn’t previously considered. The images of the wolverine and her kits are stunning, captured at dusk as they rolled through a high, barren meadow, one of the kits pausing to put its face and paw to the camera. The wolverines were caught in the southern Altai, in the region where the mountains begin to shade into the Gobi Desert. It’s hardly what we would consider optimal habitat, and yet here we had conclusive proof that wolverines are actually breeding there. This site, too, warrants a visit. So one of the remaining tasks for getting the project up and running is to visit all three sites this summer and figure out which is the best – in terms of reported wolverine population, in terms of terrain, and in terms of social factors – for conducting a multi-year camera-trapping and DNA-gathering effort.

Site selection is the first step. Next, we had to devise a statistically defensible strategy for placing camera stations across the landscape in order to estimate wolverine population parameters. This sounds fairly straightforward but actually isn’t, especially when the size of your site is as-yet undetermined. The statistical acrobatics required to go from a camera-station grid, a certain number of photo-captures, and a bunch of DNA samples, to making even a rough determination of wolverine numbers in a given region, involve taking into account everything from the unknown size of wolverine use areas in the vicinity of the traps, to the response of individual wolverines to individual traps. This probably goes without saying, but it isn’t easy to turn wolverine personality traits into a mathematical equation.

If I’d had to figure this stuff out alone, I probably would have spent most of the last few weeks crying in frustration (or drinking heavily…). Luckily Audrey Magoun’s work in SE Alaska provided a starting place (information about the Alaska project is available at The Wolverine Foundation’s research page) for both the statistics, and for methods of constructing camera stations that will induce a wolverine to stand up and display its unique chest patch to the camera. A minor diversion involved figuring out what materials we would need to do adapt Magoun’s design to the realities of available goods in Mongolia; I spent a lot of time mentally touring Ulaanbaatar’s massive Narantuul market and trying to recall what was available.

The really challenging part of the Mongolia work is the social side, though. Mongolia has one of the lowest human population densities in the world, with something like 2.5 people per square mile (the average in the US is 87 per square mile.) But someone once pointed out that although Mongolians inhabit the landscape sparsely, they inhabit it very deeply – every mountain is sacred, every pasture is known and used, every remote route through the desert or the hills is traveled, every wildlife population exploited in some way. And wolverine habitat, which is  unoccupied by humans and rarely visited in the US, is occupied and utilized for livestock grazing throughout Mongolia.  Research and conservation in these habitats is as much a question of human behavior as it is of wolverine population parameters. Devising methods for incorporating communities into the work has also been a challenge, even though I’m confident that it can be done, and done well. And while we probably can’t count on 50 enthusiastic volunteers wanting to participate just because they think wolverines are rad, we probably can count on a degree of expert knowledge about the landscape and wildlife that is lacking in America. This will be a huge resource; we just need to determine how to utilize it in ways that are beneficial to us and to Mongolians.

The focus on non-invasive methods of wildlife research is new throughout the world, a shift away from the expensive, labor-intensive collaring work that’s traditionally told us about wildlife. Collar studies still have their place, yielding information that we simply can’t obtain from non-invasive work, and we do plan to eventually conduct a limited collar study in Mongolia. But in the meantime, I’m excited to be part of pioneering new methods, especially in a place like Mongolia, where low-input research methods will be necessary to keep track of wildlife beyond just wolverines.

So, research proposals submitted, and April almost here, we now have two months to plan for the June-August summer field season in Mongolia. Looking forward to getting back out there (though maybe not to being back in a Mongolian saddle, which are made of wood….) and continuing the search for Mongolia’s nokhoi zeekh, as part of a global effort that stretches all the way from Glacier to the Altai.

 

 

 

 

Wolverines Beyond the Greater Yellowstone

Wolverines made it onto NPR two days ago, with a short feature about projects in Washington and Idaho. The story offers solid, accurate information about two research endeavors to which I’ve dedicated far too little attention on this blog; the Pacific Northwest Research Station’s North Cascades Project, and the Forest Service/Idaho Snowmobile Association Central Idaho Wolverine-Winter Recreation Study. (More information about both these projects can be found on the Wolverine Foundation’s research page.)

As an aside, when I started this blog, I thought I was dealing with a manageable subject – after all, it’s not like I decided to cook my way through someone’s 1000-page cookbook every day for a year, or try to follow politics, or document my kids, my love life, or something else that’s ongoing and perpetually in front of me. Wolverines are one of the rarest critters on the face of the planet. How much news can a rare animal generate? I figured it would be just enough for one well-written, thoughtful post a week.

As it turns out, wolverine news, like wolverine attitude, seems to be out of proportion to the animal itself. Or maybe I just love the subject enough to delve as deeply as possible into limited information. In any case, I find things slipping by me, planned posts going unwritten, and deserving information being neglected. The neglect says nothing about my opinion of the projects or information, only about my ability to manage my time. With that in mind, I’ll try to summarize below a few interesting stories from beyond my Greater Yellowstone/Mongolia bubble. I’ve been following these, and meaning to mention them, for a bit.

In February of 2010, the North Cascades wolverine study captured a young female that they nicknamed Eowyn. She left the region shortly afterward, earning attention as her journey took her 150 miles to the north, into British Columbia. Her journey was longer than those of most females, and biologists were tracking her progress as she looped back south towards Washington, covering at least 300 miles in total.

Then, in April or May, Eowyn apparently got on the wrong side of a cougar, perhaps by feeding on its kill. Her skull was found buried with deer remains; cougar scat, along with the collar, was nearby. The skull appeared to have been punctured or crushed. We know that young wolverines die in encounters with other predators, that despite their reputation for being able to scare a bear from a kill, it takes not only raw gulo courage, but sheer luck to come out on top in that sort of encounter. Eowyn’s luck was up. The death was disappointing for fans who were following her progress, and repeated a pattern that seems an essential part of the wolverine researcher’s life: catch an animal, come to know and respect its individuality, maybe even experience awe at its feats. Pin your hopes on this animal, pour your spirit into rooting for her or him, and then – the animal is killed. Or it disappears. This happens to a disproportionate number of research animals, especially dispersing juveniles, emphasizing how dangerous the world is for a young wolverine.

Earlier this year, the wolverine biologists on the North Cascades project caught another female, nicknamed Mattie. They believe she might be pregnant, although the article doesn’t specify why they think so. If she is, her kits would be the first documented wolverine reproduction in the Cascades – again, contingent on being able to confirm that she denned and produced young, the notoriously elusive holy grail of wolverine research. It’s exciting to think that we might have another confirmed breeding population of wolverines in the Lower 48. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Mattie as well as F3.

In addition to the winter recreation study in central Idaho, Idaho Fish and Game is undertaking another study in the Cabinet Mountains of northern Idaho. They are trying to assess wolverine population in this region, although so far their array of camera traps and bait stations haven’t detected any wolverines (they’ve gotten some great pictures of fishers, though.) Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness is partnering with IDFG to provide volunteers for this project. We frequently get questions about how people can volunteer on wolverine research, and unfortunately there are few opportunities. But if you live in northern Idaho, you might be in luck, so check it out.

If you prefer to experience gulo research vicariously, Doug Chadwick will also be speaking in northern Idaho in March, with talks on the 17th in Sandpoint, the 18th in Trout Creek, and the 19th in Troy.

Also from last week’s gulo news, an article appeared in a Colorado newspaper with the disappointing headline “State has no plans to bring back wolverine.” The article can only be read if you have a subscription to the paper, so lest people are convinced by the headline that the Colorado reintroduction plan is scrapped, this is simply a case of a poorly-chosen and misleading title. The article states that plans for wolverine reintroduction are subject to legislative approval and to a thorough consultation with all stakeholders, and that therefore we are unlikely to see wolverines on the ground this year. Since we always knew that this was a proposal that would work over a longer timeline, and that the earliest date for wolverines on the ground was likely to be 2012, the article offers no surprises, and simply reaffirms Colorado’s commitment to considering the social and political process.

Finally, from even further afield, Igor Shpilenok, the Russian conservationist whose photos of wolverines in the wilds of Kamchatka have impressed every gulo fan who’s seen them, has posted a couple of new images on his blog, here and here. Shpilenok manages to capture the spirit of these animals – he gets the intelligence, the curiosity, the toughness, the mystique, and even some of the vulnerability of the species, frequently all in the same shot. He’s an amazing photographer (his work, beyond wolverines, is worth a serious, long look.) Previously, I posted translations of some of his posts; in those accompanying these new photos, he simply mentions that it’s his birthday, and that he considers seeing the wolverine an excellent gift.

The Wolverine Week in Review

A small avalanche of articles on wolverines has appeared over the past two weeks. From an enthusiastic write-up of Doug Chadwick’s Canadian tour promoting The Wolverine Way, to two pleas (here, a piece in New West, and here, in National Parks Traveler) for wider protection of the species in the US, to a synopsis in High Country News of new climate change research that suggests that wolverines are facing harder times ahead, to a recap of the adventures of the lone Sierra male, wolverines are becoming more newsworthy day-by-day. Average daily visits to this blog are about twice what they were six months ago, and attendance at wolverine talks in Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming has been standing-room-only for the past ten months. All of this indicates an increased interest, which is gratifying to those of us who have long hoped that the wolverine would gain a more prominent place in our collective awareness.

Sometimes, wider attention can be two-edged, however. Over the past few years, as we’ve prepared to induct the wolverine into the ranks of conservation darlings, I’ve had a few moments of panic over the way in which good intentions could go awry. There’s a thin line between reasoned advocacy and blind enthusiasm, and it’s easy for the former to tip over into the latter. The wolverine needs a constituency, but it needs a constituency that advocates for smart things, in a smart way.

Immediately following the listing decision in December,  the environmentalist reaction to the “warranted but precluded” designation was primarily one of disappointment and reproach. I was particularly taken aback by an editorial that lambasted the decision as “political” and called for immediate listing. I’ve struggled to articulate reasons for my reaction to this piece, because I too would have preferred to see the wolverine listed and offered endangered species protections, even while realizing that the ‘warranted but precluded’ status represents a huge step forward. But, after some reflection, after a lesser resurgence of frustration while reading some of last week’s articles, and partially in reaction to some recent discussions about Montana’s trapping season (about which more to come in later posts), I think it comes down to this:

The environmental movement gained its foothold in the midst of the crises of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and its narrative – its essential script – is always of crisis. Environmental advocates are caught in a perpetual reactive cycle that is fundamentally defensive, combative, and angry. And in order to be defensive and combative, one requires, of course, someone against whom to direct one’s anger – an enemy.

In reacting to the listing decision in December, some people chose to cast the federal government in the role of enemy. There have been murmurs within the environmental advocacy community and the growing wolverine fan base, seeking to assign that role to other groups – to snowmobilers, to trappers, to ranchers. It is to the credit of environmental advocates that none of these narratives of threat have blown up and taken off, but the risk is always there. And it is a risk, for two reasons. First, using any of these potent narratives against a specific identity-based group has the potential to evoke an anti-wolverine reaction from politically powerful people. Take a ten-second glance at the state of wolf conservation, and you will understand why this would be a disaster. Second,  re-enacting the ritual battles of cultural identity that characterize environmental disputes in the West distracts us  from the real issues surrounding wolverine conservation, which are climate change and habitat fragmentation.

This, then, is why calls for listing as a conservation solution for wolverines make my stomach flip. Listing has worked fantastically for a number of species, but it’s as if people have come to believe that putting an animal on the list is the equivalent of having conserved it. That’s not the case. The wolverine could be listed, and it would make little difference to its long-term prospects, because we lack the political and social will to tackle those big, looming issues, and the ESA, which doesn’t allow us to regulate for climate change, gives us no grounds to do so.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t list the wolverine, but that we need to stay focused on substantive as well as symbolic actions. We’ve become so accustomed to fighting for listing as the apotheosis of endangered species conservation that, in some ways, we’re floundering in confusion, and clinging to the comfort of those old successes, as we try to deal with the fact that wolverines – and polar bears, and other species threatened by climate change – call for something above and beyond the predictable strategies that have worked well in the past. We don’t yet know what those solutions will look like, but we know that they will have to be bigger and just as systemic as the problems that necessitate them.

And this brings me back to narratives of combat, crisis, and enemies. If we’re going to tackle these bigger issues, we need alliances, not battle lines. We need to use reasonable federal decisions as a jumping-off point instead of entrenching and employing limited resources to fight the government. We need better data on critical questions about reproduction,  dispersal, and genetic exchange so that we know how to take effective action – which means that we need to fund research and monitoring. We need to guarantee every single wolverine a fighting chance to successfully disperse and reproduce, with as few potential sources of direct mortality as possible. We need instantaneous action on climate change, although – as Synte Peacock’s recent paper on climate modeling in wolverine habitat in the Rockies points out – it may be too late for that already. We need a push for a new conservation narrative, more complex, more sophisticated, and ultimately more successful, that can build alliances for action on those larger issues.

So keep the interest in wolverines high, and keep calling for listing, but let’s make sure that we’re also talking about what we’re going to do beyond that to ensure that the wolverine stays on the ground in the Rockies. There is a crisis, but it’s not a simple crisis with a single solution – it’s worldwide and culturally embedded, and its implications extend far beyond wolverines.

That was something of a rant, and I apologize for any sense of negativity. I deeply appreciate the increasing interest in wolverines and the sincerity behind people’s desire to see it protected. But I hope we can direct energy and resources in the most effective fashion, without getting distracted by protracted legal or media battles unless they are necessary.

To bring things down a notch, I’ll leave off with a series of camera-trap photos from Banff National Park in Canada, which includes some photos of a wolverine gnawing on a moose carcass, and a great action shot of a wolverine in mid-air, chasing a raven. Enjoy.

Upcoming Wolverine Events in Wyoming, Idaho, and British Columbia

Jason Wilmot will be giving three wolverine talks in Idaho and Wyoming to finish off a month of wolverine awareness-raising. The first is this Friday, with two more to follow in the last week of February.

February 18, Friday, Lander, Wyoming, the Noble Hotel, 12:00pm, talk sponsored by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS.)

February 23, Wednesday, Boulder, Wyoming, 6:45 pm. This is a talk primarily for NOLS students, but it may be possible for others to attend. Check with NOLS.

February 25th, Friday, Ketchum, ID, the Community Library, 6:00 pm.

Also, Doug Chadwick will be touring through British Columbia this week and next to talk about his book, The Wolverine Way.

February 15, Creston, the Rotacrest Hall, 7 pm.

February 16, Nelson, the Nelson United Church, 7pm.

February 17, Revelstoke, the Revelstoke Community Centre, 7 pm.

February 18, Golden, at the Kicking Horse Lodge, 7pm.

February 19, Invermere, the Pynelogs Cultural Centre, 7:30 pm.

February 20, Kimberly, at Centre 64, 7 pm.

February 21, Cranbrook, the Heritage Inn, 7:30pm.

February 22, Fernie, the Fernie Arts Station, 7pm.

If you are lucky enough to be in the area for any of these events, be sure to stop by and check them out. They are both great speakers.

New Book on Wolverine Camera Trapping

A new book on wolverine camera-trapping is available here.

Audrey Magoun, the lead author, is one of the great pioneers of wolverine research in the US, from early studies on ecology and biology, to hand-rearing a pair of kits to better understand their behaviors in the natural landscape, to her recent work pushing the boundaries of non-invasive monitoring techniques. In the course of her work, she discovered that each wolverine has a unique chest-patch and that you can therefore monitor individuals  if you can capture images of their patches.

Of course, this involves getting a wolverine to stand up on its hind legs for the camera (you can also tell if a female wolverine is lactating by doing this….) and I’m sure anyone with any knowledge of wolverines is aware that it’s hard to induce a gulo to do anything it doesn’t want to. How do you make a wolverine want to stand up in front of a camera?  It involves placing a bait overhead, and the efforts of wolverines to obtain said bait doesn’t stop with demurely reaching up and snagging the treat; it involves somersaults, hanging upside down, taking flying leaps, and  other acrobatics. As featured in the film Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom, the antics of Audrey’s subjects, even in still imagary, were enough to make the audience laugh out loud.

A 15-page preview of the book is available, and it looks like it is full of great shots. Given the dearth of wolverine imagery out there, it should be enjoyable to look at even if you’re a non-scientist wolverine fan. For those of us who are scientist wolverine fans, it will be fantastic to know how to set up camera traps for gulo studies – we are hoping to use these techniques for my work in Mongolia. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I am looking forward to it.

Proceeds from the sale of the book go to wolverine conservation and research.

How to Help

Last night my sister and I watched the PBS premiere of Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom with a handful of friends who were involved with starting the Glacier National Park Wolverine Project. Seeing wolverines on national television was fantastic, especially with a crowd of people who recognized every mountain and were full of jokes, stories, and the deeper history behind every incident.

The show was the highest-rated of the PBS season, and in the 15 minutes following the end of the show, visits to this blog increased 300% over the previous all-time high. Many were searching for pictures of Jasper and Banff, the captive Alaskan wolverines featured in the documentary. Others expressed interest in learning more about wolverine ecology and biology, and some wanted to volunteer with wolverine research projects. Still others were looking for information on threats, and, alarmingly, a few had googled things like “how to adopt a baby wolverine.” (If it seems slightly Orwellian that I know all of this, all I can say is, writers are all gluttons – pun intended – for knowing who’s interested in our work, and WordPress stats are addictive.) After initial delight over the sudden surge of interest in wolverines, I returned to a much-discussed question among wolverine researchers: how do you channel the enthusiasm generated by a wonderful film into conservation benefits for the species you research, care about, and – yes, I admit it – identify with?

This seems like an opportune moment to address the big question of newly-minted wolverine enthusiasts: what can you do to help?

First of all, keep learning about the species. The more you know, the better for wolverines. The best source of wolverine information remains The Wolverine Foundation, which is run by a coalition of wolverine researchers, including Jeff Copeland and Audrey Magoun, whose projects were featured in the documentary.

Second, do not try to raise a wolverine as a pet. Jasper and Banff are extremely engaging, but they are still, as Steve Kroschel points out in the movie, wild animals.  Wildlife rehabilitation and ambassador animals play an important role in conservation, but wolverines are not pets and most people don’t have what it takes to give one the kind of life it deserves and needs. If you want to adopt a wolverine, consider doing it by making a donation to a research project that monitors wolverines in the wild. Wolverine research projects are able to keep close track of each instrumented animal, and even via GPS collar, the unique personality of individual wolverines shines through. We also do a great job of keeping our donors informed about what “their” wolverines are up to, so it’s a nice way to have all the fun and adventure of having a wolverine in your life, without chewed-up furniture and potential puncture wounds.

Third, the biggest long-term need for wolverine conservation is better data. The wolverine has been petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act three times since 1994; the first time, it was denied protection due to lack of data. The second time, in 2008, it was denied protection – arguably – because the evidence of threat was not convincing enough. The third decision is due out in December of 2010; Jeff Copeland’s snow model paper, published earlier this year, may provide compelling enough evidence of threat due to climate change that wolverines will be listed. Or it may not. In any case, if the wolverine is listed, it’s only the first step in figuring out how to protect it, and as the documentary illustrated, finding out anything about these animals is time consuming, expensive, and not for the faint of heart.

After the showing last night, my friends lamented the end of funding for the wolverine project in Glacier National Park. The five year study revolutionized our understanding of wolverine ecology and demographics. There’s a long way left to go, however, and understanding the meta-population dynamics of wolverines at the southern edge of their range could provide important information about how wolverines can survive in a warmer world. Wolverine research is critical to wolverine conservation. I don’t usually do this directly, but I’m going to do it now: if you are inspired by the film, by wolverines, by the researchers who push forward through every hardship to learn about these animals, then give directly to a research project. A quick breakdown of costs: $25 buys supplies for non-invasive DNA sampling. $60 analyzes a DNA sample. $150 buys immobilization drugs. $250 covers a flight to determine whether a female is denning. $3000 buys a GPS collar. Any amount – whether it’s $5 or $5000 – shows an interest in and commitment to the species, and we appreciate it.

I work for the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, which maintains the Absaroka-Beartooth study, and if you donate to us, I’ll be thrilled (and if you want, I will personally send you updates about what the project wolverines are up to.) But there are several fantastic projects out there; you can find summaries of global research projects on the Wolverine Foundation site, to learn more about which one you want to contribute to. The Wolverine Foundation, as the organizing research body, is also in need of support.

Fourth, help out by becoming a citizen scientist if you live in wolverine territory. If you’re a backcountry skier, a snowmobiler, a hunter, a backpacker, a climber, or anyone else who spends time in the high country, let us know if you see a wolverine or tracks. You can find a pocket-sized card to download and take on your next trip here.

Finally, don’t panic. So many of our narratives about species conservation have been built around a sense of urgent threat that we default to that story whenever we are trying to figure out how to do something good for a newly-fascinating species.  I’ll write more about this over the next couple of weeks,  but the short story is this: there’s no single activity that’s directly threatening the survival of wolverines as a species, and there’s no single action – aside from reversing global warming – that will help them. Instead, it’s going to take innovation and creativity to create a new conservation model that will work for wolverines and for montane ecosystems as a whole.

Thanks to everyone who watched last night, and for those who missed it, you can see the entire documentary online at the PBS website. To writer/producer Gianna Savoie and her crew, many congratulations on a great film, and to Nature, thanks for continuing to fund and broadcast high quality work.

Wolverines on the Red Carpet

Jasper and wildlife rehabilitator Steve Kroschel set the scene during the filming of Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom. Photo copyright Gianna Savoie.

PBS Nature’s Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom premieres in less than 24 hours, at 8:00 pm on Sunday, November 14th. I’m entertaining a vision of a Hollywood event, with wolverines strolling down a red carpet to the fanfare of adoring crowds and the flash of paparazzi photography. Of course, one of the many things that makes wolverines so amazing is the fact that they’re charismatic enough to win a legion of devoted fans without the drama and glamor – they’re simply so compelling that you can’t help but be fascinated.

If wolverines can’t have a real red carpet, the way to the premiere is being paved by the cyber equivalent; the PBS website has several new goodies, including an interview with Doug Chadwick, author of The Wolverine Way, and a photo gallery with shots of the captive wolverine stars. PBS has also done something I’ve always wanted to do: walked around with a video camera asking people what they know about wolverines, and recording the answers. The result is entertaining testimony to the fact that the documentary is a much needed addition to wildlife education.

This week also sees the premiere of The Wolverine Network website, which serves as a portal to other wolverine sites. The group is a coalition of wolverine-interested groups and individuals hoping to build support for research, and awareness about wolverine conservation needs. The Wolverine Foundation, the nexus of worldwide wolverine research and, for many years, the sole online gulo presence, remains the place to go for synopses of research projects, monthly wolverine art features, great kids’ pages, and some pretty awesome wolverine hats. Rumor has it that this website will soon receive a multimedia makeover, making the content even more accessible while maintaining the commitment to covering every facet of wolverine ecology and lore.

Wolverine researcher Jeff Copeland, director of the Glacier National Park Wolverine Project, interviewed during a typical day at work. Photo copyright Gianna Savoie.

So tune in on the 14th at 8:00 pm, and then check out the Wolverine Foundation, the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative’s wolverine ecology page, the Wolverine Network, and the other information out there. And let me know what you think, of the film, the animal, and the researchers who pour so much effort into obtaining such scarce data about such an incredible species.

Jasper. Photo copyright PBS Nature.

How to Find the World’s Least-Known Animal in the World’s Most Sparsely Populated Country: A Beginner’s Guide

Mongolia is not for the timid.

Neither are wolverines.

Put the two together, and you have a situation that requires a degree of focus, brazen inventiveness, and raw physical and mental strength, contemplation of which is enough to inspire doubt in even the most self-confident, let alone a shy and introverted writer.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia from 2000-2002, serving in the town of Kharkhorin in Ovorhangai Aimag, in central Mongolia. When I first met Jason Wilmot and his wife Kate in 2006, the thing that caught my attention about wolverines was the fact that there was an unstudied population in Mongolia, and that Jason and Kate expressed the ambition of going to Mongolia and studying this population. I’d vaguely known that there were wolverines in the mountains when I was a volunteer, but I’d been much more interested in the more high-profile snow leopards and wolves; nokhoi zeekh, as the Mongolians called wolverines, weren’t on anyone’s radar. But over the course of our first meeting in a remote mountain valley in Wyoming, as Jason enthused about wolverines and I enthused about Mongolia and Kate stated with absolute certainty, “We’re going,” it seemed far too great a coincidence to allow inaction.

It took three years, but in 2009, I returned to do some preliminary interviews and to take a language class to dust off old skills. In 2010, we received enough funding to allow Jason to travel to Mongolia to participate in a pilot survey as we build relationships with the Mongolian academic and herding communities. I’m writing from Ulaanbaatar; Jason will arrive in August. In the meantime, I’ll be traveling through other parts of the country conducting further interviews, and working on a second component of the project, looking at pikas with a wildlife biologist from the Teton Science Schools, and trying to determine whether any of Mongolia’s four pika species are responding to climate change in measurable ways, as America’s pika populations appear to be doing.

The project is incredibly exciting, but also overwhelming. How do you find a wolverine in Mongolia? How do you establish a long-term monitoring agenda that takes into account the knowledge – and needs – of the local communities with whom you’ll be working?

Logically, of course, the answer is to begin with the communities. In the US, if you want to find a wolverine, you need a general idea of where it might be, and then you need a helicopter, some snowfields that will hold tracks, and someone in the helicopter who is reliable enough at track id that their assessment can be trusted. Flying a mountain range, you can determine presence and start to create a rough map of where you might set up a monitoring or trapping operation. In the US, wolverines and humans lead largely separate lives in very separate places; American culture is a culture of lowlands and valleys, and so helicopters become necessary to cover large swaths of high altitude terrain that are inaccessible and seldom visited by humans.

In Mongolia, the land is saturated with human presence. Hypothetically, humans and wolverines are sharing habitat – not just in cases of occasional human recreation, as in the Rockies of the US and Canada, but in a real and thorough way. Mongolians are making their livings in high altitude pastures, and they’re doing it, in many cases, in a movement pattern that imitates the wolverine’s seasonal movements. In technical anthropological parlance, Mongolians in mountainous areas practice transhumant pastoralism – they move to higher altitudes during the summer, and lower altitudes during the winter, and they are outside with their herds every day. So the chances of regular encounters with wolverines are much greater among Mongolian pastoralists than among even the most adventurous of mountaineering Americans. In this situation – so my hypothesis goes – you should be able to pinpoint wolverine locations with a high degree of accuracy, simply by talking to people who are in the habitat.

Of course, this remained to be proved. Two weeks ago, we set out to put the theory to the test, and headed West to Mongolia’s fiercest mountains, the Altai.