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Fish and Wildlife to implement the state's wolf conservation and management plan, developed in 2011
5
. In
addition to shaping wolf policy in Washington, through CWMP Conservation Northwest provides on-the-
ground data used to better understand the distribution of wolves across the state.
The Wolf Conservation and Management Plan identifies three recovery zones in Washington: Eastern
Washington, the North Cascades, and the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast.
6
According to this plan,
wolves will be considered recovered in the state of Washington if there are 15 successful breeding pairs for
three consecutive years. Additionally, each recovery zone must have at least four breeding pairs for three
consecutive years. As of 2014, none of Washington's 15 wolf packs have been documented in the Southern
Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery zones. In 2015, CWMP focused all of its wolf monitoring efforts in the
state to detection south of I-90 in the Cascades portion of the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast
recovery zone. Survey areas were located in areas of predicted high quality wolf habitat or in response to
specific anecdotal reports of potential wolf activity south of I-90.
WOLVERINE MONITORING
The largest terrestrial members of the weasel family, wolverines are among the rarest carnivores in North
America.
7
They prefer alpine environments where snow packs persist into late spring. Perhaps because they
live in these harsh environments where food is scarce, wolverines are extremely mobile carnivores with home
ranges between 100 km² to over 900 km². This means they typically live in low densities across large
landscapes.
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After near eradication from the lower 48 states in the 1900s, wolverines have begun to recover in
areas such as the North Cascades, and since 2005, state researchers have identified a dozen individual
wolverines. Much is still unknown about these rare and elusive species, and CWMP is helping to collect more
information.
Though conservation groups have pursued listing the wolverine as endangered under the Endangered Species
Act at both the federal and state levels, in the fall of 2014, the USFWS published their final ruling on the listing
status for wolverine nationwide and determined that the species did not warrant federal protections.
9
In
response to the negative finding from USFWS, conservation groups have filed a lawsuit against the
5
http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00001/
6
Gary J. Wiles, Harriet L. Allen, and Gerald E. Hayes, Wolf Conservation and Management Plan: State of
Washington (Olympia, WA, USA: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, December 2011).
7
Keith B. Aubry, Kevin S. Mckelvey, and Jeffrey P. Copeland, "Distribution and Broadscale Habitat Relations of
the Wolverine in the Contiguous United States," Journal of Wildlife Management 71, no. 7 (2007): 2147,
doi:10.2193/2006-548.; Vivian Banci, "Wolverine," in The Scientific Basis for Conserving Forest Carnivores: American
Marten, Fisher, Lynx, and Wolverine in the Western United States., ed. Leonard F. Ruggiero et al. (Fort Collins,
Colorado, USA: USDA Forest Service Technical Report, 1994), 99–127.
8
Banci, Vivian. "Wolverine." In The Scientific Basis for Conserving Forest Carnivores: American Marten, Fisher, Lynx,
and Wolverine in the Western United States., edited by Leonard F. Ruggiero, Keith B. Aubry, Steven W. Bushkirk,
Jack L. Lyon, and William J. Zielinksi, 99–127. Fort Collins, Colorado, USA: USDA Forest Service Technical
Report, 1994.
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Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife December 17, 2013 press release: fws.gov/mountain-
prairie/pressrel/2013/12172013_wolverine.php
