Wolverines break through … finally!

Inside the inspiring effort that confirmed the first reproductive wolverine den in Washington’s southern Cascade Range in modern times

Cascades Carnivore Project video of “Pepper” and kits confirmed new wolverines in the South Cascades. Their work continues. Video courtesy of Cascades Carnivore Project

By Jocelyn Akins. June 11, 2020. The William O. Douglas Wilderness is a remote and wild area just outside of Mount Rainier National Park’s eastern boundary. Because most visitors to the region are drawn to the iconic mountain and its easier access, relatively few hikers venture out into this U.S. Forest Service Wilderness.

Even so, in the late spring of 2018, I wasn’t overly confident that our team of researchers would have much luck making visual contact with a female wolverine field cameras had captured images of weeks earlier. And I had no idea that what they’d find on that late spring day would lead to one of the most significant wolverine discoveries in three-quarters of a century.

Cascades Carnivore Project—which I’d founded a decade earlier—finally had irrefutable evidence that wolverines from the North Cascades had crossed Interstate 90 and were reproducing. They were beginning to recolonize the South Cascades and establish a bona fide population.

The thrill was immense.

I had founded Cascades Carnivore Project to study wolverines further south, on Mount Adams. It had taken 15 painstaking months to yield a single photograph of a wolverine. And now a decade had passed before I could confirm they were reproducing, and not spiraling into oblivion.

To gain such a research reward after so much blood, sweat and tears was extremely satisfying. I may have screamed with sheer joy; there were many hugs amongst our ragtag crew of shoestring wildlife researchers.

Bears and wolverines

My dream had always been to become a carnivore biologist. I grew up on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia, where I regularly encountered black bears. I spent my childhood hiking through the subalpine meadows and jagged peaks of nearby Mount Baker, which I could see from my bedroom window.

In 2005, I landed my first paying job estimating grizzly bear numbers in the Alberta foothills of the Canadian Rockies with a local NGO called the Foothills Model Forest. I was also lucky enough to work in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks during the summers of 2005 and 2007 studying grizzly bear ecology for the USGS Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

In the winter of 2007, I returned to Yellowstone as a volunteer for the Absaroka-Beartooth Wolverine Study, a research project supported by the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. My field partner and I were charged with checking 10 wolverine live-traps every day at dawn and dusk. Between us and four other two-person crews, we spent endless hours running traps throughout the winter.

When we finally captured our first wolverine, I was amazed that the large male growling inside the trap weighed only 38 pounds. That’s just about one-tenth the weight of the average Yellowstone grizzly. I banged the outside of the trap with my hatchet to encourage him to stop chewing through the six-inch lodgepole pine rounds that made up the trap.

The wolverine has an outsized reputation. Incredible feats have been attributed to this midsized carnivore. My hairdresser recently told me she loves wolverines because they can kill a bear. Not true.

They also have this renown for scaring large predators like grizzlies away from carcasses. But I think this must be such a rare event. The risk of being injured by a large carnivore is rarely worthwhile in the struggle for survival.

Emblematic, elusive, endangered

The spring after wolverine trapping ended in Yellowstone, I returned to Hood River, Oregon, where I’d recently established a home. I was surprised to learn that two years earlier, in 2005, a lone wolverine had been discovered on the Yakama Reservation on nearby Mount Adams across the Columbia River in Washington’s Cascade Range.

Yakama Nation biologists had recorded a photograph taken at a single remote camera monitoring station. No other evidence was found.

The detection was extremely intriguing to me. Mount Adams lay outside the contemporary distribution of wolverines at the time. I wanted to know whether this individual was a single disperser in a lonely pursuit of a mate, or one of many from a remnant population that had gone undetected by scientists. 

The occasional wolverine is known to roam far and wide. Famously, a wolverine named M56, collared for a research study in the Teton Range of Wyoming, wandered south into Colorado, becoming the first wolverine in the state in almost 100 years; and then unluckily died in 2016 by the bullet of a ranch hand’s pistol in North Dakota.

North Dakota! Midwestern wheat fields and cattle ranches. What was a wolverine doing far from the typically rugged habitats wolverines are associated with in the contiguous United States?

In 2008, another lone male, later nicknamed Buddy, was detected near Lake Tahoe by a Pacific marten researcher, making it the first known wolverine in California since 1922. The nearest known wolverine population to Lake Tahoe is in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountain Range, about 400 miles away.

I figured it wouldn’t be totally far-fetched for the Mount Adams wolverine to have wandered over from the Sawtooths. 

Where the wolverine roam

Wolverines have a circumpolar distribution in the northern hemisphere, occurring in Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, China and North America. Historically they occurred in North America as far south as the Sierra Nevada of California; though, there was a gap in their distribution in southern Oregon and northern California.

Wolverine numbers dwindled throughout the 20th century in large part due to predator poisoning aimed at gray wolves and bears, large-scale timber extraction, road building and to a smaller extent from fur trapping. By about the 1930s they were extirpated from the Pacific states.

In the 1960s, there were a smattering of reports of wolverines that had either returned or persisted as a very few individuals in their historic range in Washington. Then came a slow increase of verifiable observations during the 1990s.

Wolverines seemed to be making a modest, yet astounding, comeback.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Wolverines are best studied in winter, when they’re most attracted to bait and snow makes tracking easier.[/perfectpullquote]

By 2005, a small population of wolverines from Canada had re-established in the North Cascades Ecosystem. Researchers live-trapped and satellite-collared 14 individuals in northern Washington to learn about this newly re-established population.

They found that some of the Washington wolverines had territories of almost 2,000 square-kilometers (about 770 square miles) or more, seven times larger than grizzly bear home ranges, which are estimated at 280 square kilometers (about 110 square miles). Typically one male can cover the same area as two or three females, and will mate with each of them.

Two things were certain—there were very few wolverines and they roamed huge areas of wild and rugged mountains in the Cascade Range.

Birth of Cascades Carnivore Project

To begin addressing the research questions I had—Where did the Mount Adams wolverine come from and were there other individuals in the area?—I approached the Washington Department Fish and Wildlife. I wanted to learn more about the Department’s efforts to monitor rare mesocarnivores (carnivores that inhabit the middle of the food web, and are not typically top predators).

At the time, they weren’t doing much for carnivores in Washington’s Cascades south of Interstate 90. The department has a limited budget and it was occupied with protecting the state’s most at-risk species, such as salmon and spotted owls.

Wolverines are notoriously difficult to study. They roam large areas and inhabit remote, roadless mountain ranges.

On top of that, they’re best studied during winter, when they’re most attracted to the bait we set out and when snow makes tracking easier. But I’d hiked and mountaineered all my life and felt that this was exactly the sort of effort I wanted to take on.

Thus began in 2008 the Cascades Carnivore Project, later officially registered as a nonprofit research organization and supported by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the United States Forest Service and the National Park Service. 

I had no idea how to raise funds for such an endeavor. But there was incredible support from the local community and things got rolling.

I assembled a crew of friends and other Hood River locals. Working on days off from my wildlife consultant job on Oregon wind farms, we began setting camera stations deep in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

In the early days, we backcountry skied long days into the mountains. Eventually, I borrowed a 1996 Yamaha snowmobile, a gutless, old beast that floundered in our Cascade concrete snow.

But it allowed us to access the heart of wolverine habitat. We could now travel to the north side of Mount Adams and snowshoe or ski up to timberline to deploy our camera stations.

It took 15 months to obtain the first photograph of a wolverine—15 long months setting camera traps as far into the mountainous wilderness as we could get.

I was over the moon. I probably yelled loud enough for the wolverine to hear.

Cascades Carnivore Project has been monitoring the natural re-colonization of wolverines in Washington’s southern Cascades ever since.

That first detection was quickly followed by a second one nearby. And then 11 more between 2009 and 2012 around Mount Adams and north to the Goat Rocks Wilderness.

Then things stagnated. I started focusing on another rare but slightly easier to study species, the Cascade red fox. The wolverine project was put on hold. 

Breakthrough

Six years, a Ph.D. in conservation genetics and two children later, I returned my focus to wolverines. With our field crew, I trekked north in search of more wolverines around Mount Rainier and the surrounding wilderness.

At this time, I’d established a fruitful collaboration with the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, and had been working with two talented young field technicians, Scott Shively and Kayla Dreher. Together, we’d deployed 16 wolverine-specific monitoring stations throughout Washington’s southern Cascades designed specifically to identify individual wolverines from photographs.

In March 2018, Scott asked to set a camera station deep in the heart of the William O. Douglas Wilderness, farther than any other stations we had set, which already took long days to access.

The goal was far-fetched in my mind. There wasn’t even enough daylight to get to such a remote place in winter. The trip also involved crossing a river that was too big and dangerous in winter conditions.

But Scott was so excited. Who was I to stand in the way of such determination? This was exactly the sort of energy that had gotten the project off the ground in the first place.

On a snowy March morning, Scott and Kayla ventured out well before dawn. It wasn’t until midnight that they returned with the bait hung and camera deployed, having crossed the Bumping River twice, once in the dark.

A month later they returned, this time with tents, sleeping bags and food for an overnight trip.

I was not on this trip, as I stayed closer to home to be near my husband and three- and five-year-olds, and run the Mount Adams stations. But I learned of the results when they returned.

Scott and Kayla had found wolverine tracks all around the camera station and along a ridge where the station was located. The female, who we nicknamed “Pepper,” was recorded at the camera station.

When we examined the photos on my laptop, we noticed that, incredibly, she showed enlarged teats, meaning she was lactating and likely had kits in a den nearby. This was the first female wolverine documented in Washington’s South Cascades in over 75 years or more, and she was reproducing.

I knew this was an incredible find but there was so much more to learn.

More luck followed when a rare, late spring snowstorm provided ideal tracking conditions over the next clear days.

Confirmation day

The crew agreed to return to the camera station and see if they could find and follow her tracks and determine where her den may be located.

A week later, once the storm had abated and we’d allowed a few days for wildlife to lay down tracks in the snow, Scott and Kayla returned to the station and found more visits by Pepper.

They followed her tracks over a ridge into a nearby glacial cirque. They sat down and glassed the whole drainage with binoculars and found many tracks coming in and out of a copse of trees.

As the team descended into a wide drainage at the base of the cirque to investigate, Pepper appeared loping across a frozen lake. She skirted in and out of trees on the lake edge, watching them before continuing away from the tracks through the trees.

The crew raced back up to the ridge where there was spotty cell service and called me. I was jogging up the town stairs with my three-year-old son on my back to get some exercise. I immediately called world-renowned wolverine biologist Audrey Magoun to see if the crew should continue on to the tracks going in and out of the copse of trees.

She let me know that at this time of year, in early May, wolverine mothers typically move their kits from a natal den to rendezvous sites where they can move about and better find food. So we felt it would be all right to approach the den as it may not have been their long-term home.

Scott and Kayla continued to the trees and discovered a snow hole. They set a camera on Kayla’s ski pole and left the site to avoid disturbing Pepper any more.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]A decade ago, when a wolverine was found in the South Cascades, it was hard to imagine others joining this lone critter.[/perfectpullquote]

I returned to the snow-hole site with Scott and Kayla a fortnight later. In the soft spring snow the ski pole with the camera held as a sentinel for nine days and then slumped over. But before that happened, it captured video of the female with her two wolverine kits, likely born in mid-February and now 10 weeks old.

We confirmed this was the first reproductive wolverine den documented in Washington’s southern Cascade Range, and just the third den in the state, in over 75 years.

I was bowled over. A decade after running stations across the South Cascades and photographing only a single male wolverine over many years, not only had we detected a female—meaning wolverine reproduction was possible—but we’d located her natal den. These are extremely difficult to find even in a larger population.

During the last night of this trip, Scott and I were awoken at 1 a.m. to a sniffing sound close to my tent. I froze in my sleeping bag and listened to an animal drawing two deep inhales. The next morning, I discovered fresh wolverine tracks in the snow four feet from my tent where I’d draped my stinky socks over a cedar sapling to dry overnight.

Genetic analysis of hair and scat samples revealed that Pepper and a male wolverine detected at stations around the den both had the genetic signature of the North Cascades wolverine population. This strongly suggests the South Cascades are being re-colonized from the north. 

Somehow, these remarkable creatures had made it across I-90, one of the biggest obstacles to wildlife migration in the Cascades. This in itself was rare and inspiring news.

The future of Cascades wolverines

Cascades Carnivore Project is now working with a larger genetic dataset to figure out how many wolverines have come down to Washington from Canada, how likely individuals are to consistently cross I-90 into southern Washington and the prospects for their long-term persistence in Washington and elsewhere in the continental United States.

Connectivity is a huge deal for small populations because they often naturally have low genetic diversity. The wolverine lost much genetic diversity when it was wiped out from Washington. Individuals migrating in from elsewhere and mating help create the genetic stock necessary to adapt to a changing landscape.

Conservation Northwest and the Sierra Club Checkerboard Project, two environmental NGOs, created the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition to build new wildlife bridges and underpasses for animals to cross safely over and under I-90.

Wolverine researchers in Washington are excited by the return of this unique carnivore and its expansion throughout the state. But they have concerns that threats from climate change and increased recreation in the mountains may threaten their survival.  

Late last month, a wolverine, incredibly, made its way to the Washington coast, a feat unheard of in the Pacific states. Sure, wolverines are known to beachcomb in Canada and Alaska, but never has one been verified outside of the mountains in Washington.

My immediate thought was to wonder, which zoo lost its wolverine? But we checked with each zoo in the area. All critters were safe and sound.

I believe that like M56 (the Colorado wolverine) and Buddy the California wolverine, this one was dispersing and searching for a new home and a mate.

The population of wolverines in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the Central Cascades, and those further north, where this one likely came from, is largely unstudied. It’s impossible to know without further research how the prey populations, for example, are faring in the Cascade Range.

In early March, just before the park closed for COVID-19, we visited one of our wolverine stations in Mount Rainier National Park and discovered a new female wolverine.

Whether she is a reproducing mother is uncertain. But her arrival brings hope for the future of wolverines in the southern Cascades.

When the park closed we were unable to snow track her or locate a den. But she continued to visit our station, so we knew she’d likely established a territory in the park.

Cascades Carnivore Project continues its long-term study of wolverines and other mesocarnivores, such as the Cascade red fox, Canada lynx and the fisher in the Cascade Range. We are focused on understanding how climate change affects these rare carnivores and their alpine ecosystems.

A decade ago, when we detected the first wolverine in Washington’s South Cascades in modern times, it was hard to imagine others would join this lone critter. Despite successes detecting virtually every other carnivore in the Cascade Range, for many years our efforts to locate additional wolverines turned up nothing.

Pepper and this new female provide hope for the possibility of wolverines returning for the long-term.