7
5. Detect transboundary wildlife activity between northeast Washington and British Columbia with a specific
focus on documenting and collecting genetic information from Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis).
WOLF MONITORING
Since 2008, when this program's remote cameras documented the first wolf pups born back in Washington in
over 70 years, Conservation Northwest has played a major role in wolf recovery in Washington. As of December of
2016, Washington is home to 20 confirmed wolf packs, with the new Sherman pack confirmation in the spring of
2016 and the Touchet pack in late 2016
4
. WDFW updated their 2016 Annual Report in March of 2017 to reflect the
state's most up-to-date wolf count, with a minimum of 115 wolves calling Washington state home at the end of
2017
5
. In addition to shaping wolf policy in Washington and leading the Range Rider Pilot Project, through the
CWMP, Conservation Northwest carries out monitoring efforts, the results of which are 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, geographically distributed across the three regions. Additionally, each recovery zone must have
at least four breeding pairs for three consecutive years. As of 2017, none of Washington's 20 wolf packs have
been documented in the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery zones, while 16 are present in the
Eastern Washington recovery zone. In 2017, CWMP focused its wolf monitoring efforts on detection south of I-90
in the state's designated Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast Recovery Zone. Installations were located in
areas of predicted high quality wolf habitat or in response to specific anecdotal reports of potential wolf activity
within these recovery zones.
WOLVERINE MONITORING
The largest terrestrial members of the weasel family, wolverines are among the rarest carnivores in North
America.
7
They prefer alpine and subalpine 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 large home ranges between 100 km² to over 900 km². This means they typically live in low densities across
large landscapes.
8
After near eradication from the lower 48 states in the early 1900s, wolverines have begun to
recover in areas such as the North Cascades, and, since 2005, state researchers have identified more than a dozen
4
http://wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/gray_wolf/packs/21/
5
https://www.fws.gov/wafwo/articles.cfm?id=149489625
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.
