This project is intended to advance wolverine conservation across the Rocky Mountains and North Cascades in the contiguous United States. It will include maintaining landscape connectivity among occupied wolverine habitats, assessing the feasibility to assist wolverine distribution expansion with translocation, developing and implementing a collaborative multi-state monitoring plan to assess distribution and genetic characteristics of the metapopulation, and engaging key partners at multiple levels to prioritize habitat conservation, population connectivity, and management activities.
We have 4 overarching project objectives, all of which apply across the range of wolverines in the contiguous U.S.:1. Maintain landscape connectivity among occupied, core wolverine habitats of the northern U.S. Rockies and north Cascades.2. Develop policies that address the socio-political needs for assisting wolverine distribution expansion with translocation, and establish protocols for testing wolverine translocation methods.3. Develop and implement a collaborative, multi-state monitoring plan (among partner states, tribes, federal agencies, key collaborators, and expertise in statistics, genetics, and wolverine ecology) to assess distribution, occupancy, and genetic characteristics of the metapopulation.4. Engage key partners at multiple levels to prioritize habitat conservation, population connectivity, and management activities.
Wolverine persistence in the Rocky Mountains and North Cascades depends on secure suitable habitat, adequate distribution throughout that habitat, and connectivity among habitats. The ability to gauge this persistence depends on the ability to track wolverine metapopulation status across a multi-state region. While broad distribution patterns of wolverines in the contiguous U.S. are generally known, the scarcity of verified records along with the ability of individual wolverines to move hundreds of miles over a period of weeks means that the specific distribution of wolverines, especially breeding females, remains vague. Wildlife managers currently lack information to determine viability of subpopulations, or assess changes in viability resulting from a changing landscape. We need to establish a current, rigorous estimate of wolverine distribution in a consistent manner across the metapopulation to serve as the baseline from which to move forward with land use planning, threats analyses, establishing research priorities, and developing conservation strategies. We also need a baseline from which to assess if wolverine distribution is expanding or contracting, and the influences of conservation actions (e.g., connectivity habitat conservation and translocations), environmental changes (e.g., climate and land cover changes), and anthropogenic disturbances (e.g., roads and subdivisions) on any such changes, when we repeat monitoring surveys in future years (beyond this grant period).
GNLCC contributed to Project 4 of the broader, WAFWA-led project.
FY2015and FY2016, Project 4 Objectives:1. Establish a baseline distribution of wolverines across the four-state area by implementing the monitoring framework developed in Project #3 in a coordinated, cohesive fashion during winters 2015/16 and 2016/17.2. Evaluate the programs effectiveness and develop recommendations for long-term monitoring of changes in wolverine distribution and for assessing the influences of conservation actions, environmental changes, and anthropogenic disturbances on any such changes.3. Identify potential study areas for Project #2 above (Translocation).
