The wily wolverine, after decades of court battles, has received protection as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently announced its final rule to list the American wolverine as a threatened species in the Lower 48 states.
The wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family, found within the Northern Rocky Mountains and the North Cascades. They are superheroes of the animal world and masters of the high, wild north, keeping to alpine regions, boreal forests, and the tundra of Alaska and Canada. When few other animals are out and about, wolverines are scrabbling up frozen slopes with their crampon-like claws and crunching through frozen bones of carrion dug out of snow.
They are among the rarest of mammals in North America with only about 300 surviving in the contiguous U.S., according to USFWS.
The wolverine was nearly wiped out in the 1900s by trapping. Today, the biggest threat to this denizen of deep snow is the threat to snow itself: climate warming.
"Current and increasing impacts of climate change and associated habitat degradation and fragmentation are imperiling the North American wolverine," said USFWS Pacific Regional Director Hugh Morrison in a prepared statement. "This listing determination will help to stem the long-term impact and enhance the viability of wolverines in the contiguous United States."
Wolverines require deep snow that persists into the spring to successfully den and rear their young and to cache their food. But climate warming is changing both how much snow falls and how long it persists in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, which threatens wolverines and so much else that depends on snow, from water supply to salmon survival and winter recreation.
Protection for wolverines under the ESA means that federal agencies immediately are prohibited from taking actions that threaten wolverine survival. Over the next year, the USFWS also will determine which critical habitats that support wolverine survival will require additional protections..
"We are glad the wolverine is finally listed and just wish it had not taken this long," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which along with other environmental groups, has been fighting to list the wolverine for protection since 1994.
USFWS has proposed the animal for listing in the past but reversed itself under the Trump administration. A court order finally spurred the decision announced this week.
The wolverine is an indicator species of how our world is changing in a warming climate — and what we must do for it and other species to survive: protect forests that help absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and reduce emissions from fossil fuel burning, Greenwald said.
"The big picture is that we absolutely have to reduce our emissions, and protect our forests and grasslands that uptake carbon," Greenwald said.
Winter recreation and habitat fragmentation also threaten the wolverine. There also are more people today in the high winter redoubts of the wolverine than ever before, from backcountry snowboarding and skiing to helicopter tourism, and other development.
The agency also announced an interim rule to exempt from protections losses of wolverine related to research, incidental trapping, or because of logging to reduce wildfire risk.
