Appendix C – Seattle Times story, "Once extinct here, wolverines on the rebound"
See link for full story and photos:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020260612_wolverinereturnxml.html
Once extinct here, wolverines on the rebound
Once trapped and poisoned to extinction, Washington wolverines are making a
comeback. Their recovery here has new importance as climate change is predicted in
the future to melt much of the deep, late snow cover wolverines need to survive.
By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times staff reporter
LEAVENWORTH, Chelan County — Biologist Don Youkey picked his way along a log
nailed to a tree trunk nearly five feet above the ground and reached overhead to hang a
cow knuckle bone and chunk of raw rib meat.
He hopes the tasty new bait will lure one of the newest carnivores cruising these snowy
woods to trigger a remote camera that will snap its photo: Gulo gulo, the wiley
wolverine.
Once shot on sight, trapped and poisoned as vermin, wolverines were extinct in
Washington by the 1930s. But they are making a comeback, repopulating portions of
their historic home range for the first time in decades. On Friday, they were proposed
for listing as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
Wolverines used to range along the Cascade Crest from the Canadian border all the way
to Mount Rainier, but now remain exceedingly rare, with perhaps just 25 animals in
Washington, and only about 250 to 300 in the Lower 48.
The wolverine's return to Washington is amazing scientists. "We are witnessing what
we think is the expansion of wolverine into their former range," said Keith Aubry,
research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research
Station in Olympia. Aubry for eight winters had led the first‐ever radio‐tracking study
of wolverines in Washington.
Genetic testing shows the animals they are finding can be traced to populations in
Canada that recolonized here once the persecution stopped. Now, those animals, once
just visitors, have established resident populations — and they are spreading. "We have
growing evidence of them using larger and larger areas over time," Aubry said.
So far, scientists have confirmed resident wolverine populations from the North
Cascades to as far south as this bait lure south of Highway 2 west of Leavenworth.
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CWMP 2012-2013 Winter Field Season Report
