Multi-state wolverine study seeks volunteers

BUFFALO – Starting in December, local volunteers will be able to assist with the Western States wolverine conservation Program in the Bighorn National Forest, in cooperation with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Led by the Council for the Bighorn Range, this citizen monitoring effort will collect data on the rare carnivores, to help the National Forest planning efforts and provide information on how the animals live in the wild.

An informational meeting was held in Worland on Oct. 5, and prospective volunteers were informed that collection stations will be established in the forest boundary, equipped with hair collection snares and motion-triggered cameras, to capture DNA samples and photo evidence of wolverines and lynx.

Wyoming Game and Fish is establishing five collection stations, while volunteers with the Council for the Bighorn Range will establish three to five additional sites, all requiring volunteers from Sheridan, Buffalo, and the Big Horn Basin until May of 2017.

Rob Davidson, coordinator for the Council for the Bighorn Range, said that 15 volunteers have been recruited so far, with two from the Worland-Ten Sleep area. “Our focus on the west side of the mountain will be up around Paintrock Lakes,” said Davidson, describing the process as a once-a-month trip to collect photo data and hair samples.

“Our method to collect DNA is to use bore brushes, like you clean guns with, belted to trees above bait provided by Game and Fish,” said Davidson. “When they brush up against it, it takes a good sample and they don’t seem to mind.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, wolverines are currently found in the North Cascades in Washington and the Northern Rocky Mountains in Idaho, Montana, Oregon (Wallowa Range), and Wyoming. Individual wolverines have also moved into historic range in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, but have not established breeding populations in these areas.

USFWS research indicates that wolverines either did not exist as established populations prior to settlement and to the compilation of historical records in the Great Lakes region, possibly due to climate changes that occurred through the 1800s and 1900s. The widely scattered records from this region are consistent with dispersing individuals from a Canadian population that receded north early in the 1800s.

The possibility that wolverines existed as established populations prior to the onset of trapping in this area cannot be ruled out, but we have no evidence that they did. No evidence in the historical records suggests that wolverines were ever present as established populations in the Great Plains, Midwest, or Northeast.

Davidson noted that the project will last for multiple winters, so volunteers will be needed on a rotating basis until 2019.

For more information, or to volunteer, contact Rob Davidson at rdavidson@ councilbighornrange.com.