MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2018

FALL/WINTER 2018 MLCM 77 words :: Faith Rudebusch The old story from the Canadian North is that if a grizzly bear and a wolverine come face to face on a trail, the bear will get out of the way. And that a wolverine will break into and destroy a trapper’s cabin—not in search of food, but just because it’s there. “Wolverine are pretty awesome. They have unique personalities—they’re mysterious and elusive,” says Matt Scrafford, a scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada who studies wolverine. Well adapted to cold, boreal forests circling the North Pole, wolverine are relatives of weasels, otters, mink, and badgers. They can be found in the Coast Mountains, but they are rare—and populations seem to be declining across the board. According to Scrafford, due to their low densities, low numbers, and low reproductive rates, wolverine are “particularly sensitive to human effects from climate change and resource extraction.” Population studies show that wolverine have disappeared from 40 per cent of their North American range since European settlement. In Canada they are listed as a Species of Special Concern, but researching the elusive animal can be challenging. Scrafford recently led a research team in Northern Alberta, where industry has moved into wolverine turf. The team meticulously built 22 split-log live traps in the area’s backcountry. Baited with beaver carcasses and wired to send an electronic alert when triggered, these traps caught 44 wolverine in all. The researchers fitted the animals with radio collars, released them, and pieced together one of the largest radio collar studies on wolverine to date. The study site, near Rainbow Lake in the northwest corner of Alberta, is in the heart of wolverine habitat. Wetlands are scattered among forests of aspen, birch, spruce, and jack pine, and human residents are outnumbered by black bears, wolves, moose and beavers. Since the 1950s, the region’s wealth of natural resources has attracted industry—and paraphernalia from oil and gas extractions and timber clearcuts increasingly fragment the forest. According to Scrafford’s research, wolverine are most uneasy around roads, even avoiding those with as little traffic as two cars per day. But one type of roadside attraction, borrow pits, fascinate wolverine. Borrow pits are holes WOLVERINE Phantom Of The Mountains WILD ANIMALS