One year after federal listing, Idaho forest managers work to ensure wolverine survival • Idaho Capital Sun

Wolverines live in remote, high-altitude alpine habitats. In winter they rely on the deep snow cover to dig burrows in which to raise their young. There is limited population data on wolverines, but in 2014 US Fish and Wildlife appreciated that between 250 and 300 wolverines lived in the Lower 48 States.

The Wolverine Monitoring Enhancement Project began in October with scientists installing motion cameras, scent dispensers and hair snare stations in the Boise, Payette and Sawtooth National Forests in Idaho. The goal is to lure wolverines to trees with the scent of roadkill and grab a strand of hair while they investigate the scent. The hair samples are used to analyze the DNA.

The project will be carried out for the next three years It is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Species Recovery Fund.

The Wolverine Monitoring Enhancement Project uses data collected in a similar manner Study 2010–2015 This examined the impact of backcountry winter recreation on wolverine populations in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

However, this study concluded that they did not have enough information to determine the effects.

This new study aims to gather more information, but at a local level, Kelly Martin, public affairs specialist for the Payette National Forest, told the Idaho Capital Sun.

“We are trying to gather as much information as possible to limit the impact on the species,” she said. “What does that mean? Right now we can’t say, ‘We need to do X, Y, or Z to limit impacts on wolverines,’ because we just don’t know exactly what that would be.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists wolverines as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act

Wolverines were once found throughout the northern part of the United States, from states like Montana and Idaho to regions as far south as New Mexico in the Rocky Mountains and Southern California in the Sierra Nevada. But after more than a century of unregulated fishing and habitat destruction, wolverines in the Lower 48 are now found only in small populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming and northeastern Oregon.

Conservation groups have been pushing for federal protection of the wolverine for two decades.

In 1995, conservation groups petitioned the federal government to list the species and went through six successful rounds of litigation to secure federal protection.

Under the new protections, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must develop a wolverine recovery plan, identify critical habitat that will be protected in the future and potentially plan to reintroduce the species to Colorado.