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Wolverine Population Assessment in the Glacier National Park Ecosystem
The wolverine is one of North America's most rare mammals and least known large carnivores, with only two previous long-term field research projects completed in the lower 48 United States. Lack of basic ecological information on wolverine makes the species increasingly vulnerable to impacts, which prompted petitions to list the wolverine under the endangered species act in 1995 and 2000. The impact of disturbance from winter recreation remains a primary management concern within forests wherever the wolverine is present.
The Glacier Wolverine Project was initiated in 2002 with the primary objective of studying reproductive ecology and den site habitat associations. Significant success in capturing and monitoring wolverine has extended the scope of the research to include ecological associations of movement. Wolverines live in low density populations, often in isolated mountain ranges. By monitoring wolverine movement at varying scales, researchers hope to develop habitat resistance models that will help our understanding of how wolverines move across the landscape within home ranges and across broad landscapes. Researchers at the Missoula Lab are using GPS collars to document fine-scale movement and ARGOS satellite collars to monitor long-distance dispersals that often track wolverine as they disperse hundreds of kilometers. Results to date indicate that wolverines move at a rate of about 4 kilometers/hour so in order to monitor how they negotiate landscape features, such as topography and variations in habitat, researchers are programming GPS collars to collect locations at 5 minute intervals. This results in a spacing of about 300 meters between points.
In addition, researchers are monitoring reproductively mature female wolverine to learn more about the type and structure of habitat selected for den sites. To date, less than 10 wolverine den sites have been discovered and described in the contiguous US, eight of which have been described by RMRS researchers. Wolverines are believed to den near timberline in subalpine habitat in late February. The places wolverine chose to den are often the same places people like to snowmobile or ski, which has raised concerns regarding potential disturbance or displacement. This work will address such questions by helping managers better understand the characteristics of sites selected by wolverines for dens, and how these compare with the places people like to play in the winter.
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Rocky Mountain Research Station
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