November 18, 2024
Recent data, available to the Government of Alberta, shows updated wolverine population counts of less than 1000 individuals, sufficient to consider the species ‘threatened’.
Earlier this month, in an unprecedented move, the Alberta government removed all trapping limits on fisher, Canada lynx, river otter, and wolverine in Registered Fur Management Areas.
The justification? To get more data on how many there are, especially for wolverine populations.
However, contrary to Minister Loewen’s assertion, there is already sufficient data to suggest that wolverine populations are at risk, and declining. Further, one of the most effective ways to recover the species is to reduce trapping.
“Wolverines naturally occur at low numbers with low adult natural mortality, and have extremely low reproductive rates. This means that unlike other animals, they cannot rebound quickly to make up for increases in mortality.” Mirjam Barrueto, a researcher studying wolverines at the University of Calgary, informs us, “All research in Canada and Alberta has shown that harvest is the main source of human-caused wolverine mortality, and needs to be kept at very low levels so that populations don’t start to shrink, unless there are large, untrapped, thriving populations nearby that can function as a source population.”
Her and her colleagues’ latest research suggests there are fewer than 1000 total wolverines left in Alberta, which includes a population decline of 40 percent over the last 10 years in an area that was largely protected.
She adds, “The wolverine population in Alberta 20 years ago was estimated to be below IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] thresholds for vulnerable (threatened) species, at fewer than 1000 mature individuals. At that point, there was already concern about population declines. Our new Alberta-wide wolverine density estimate is currently going through peer-review and will be published soon. Preliminary results show that there are less than 1000 total individuals in Alberta. Substantially increasing harvest mortality even for one or two years is very likely going to have detrimental effects on Alberta’s wolverine populations.”
This information has been shared with Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, which is finalizing an updated Status Report on wolverine.
Even without this new information, we have known for decades that trapping is one of the greatest threats to wolverines. The 2002 Report of Alberta’s Endangered Science Conservation Committee states, “the trapping of only a few individuals has a large potential to affect negatively the reproductive success of the [wolverine] population, and recovery from any population decline will be slow.”
“There is no reason to allow unlimited trapping of wolverines or other sensitive furbearing species,” says Ruiping Luo, conservation specialist with Alberta Wilderness Association, “Available data indicates trapping limits were too high, and needed to be reduced. Removing trapping limits contradicts all scientific data and decades of sustainable management.”
John E. Marriott, co-founder of the Exposed Wildlife Conservancy, adds, “Killing wolverines to count them is a nonsensical approach to determining the provincial population. We didn’t kill grizzly bears to count them when we suspected Alberta’s grizzlies were threatened in the early 2000s, instead, we employed intensive non-intrusive DNA studies to properly count the bears and list them as Threatened in 2010. The same methods work for wolverines and should be employed to count them across the province, especially the boreal forest. Kill data only tells us where a wolverine used to be, it tells us nothing about how many there are or whether the harvest is sustainable.”
Background:
For more information, contact:
Ruiping Luo, Alberta Wilderness Association (rluo@abwild.ca; 403-283-2025)
John Marriott, Exposed Wildlife Conservancy (johnemarriott@gmail.com, 403-688-3851)
Mirjam Barrueto, University of Calgary (Mirjam.barrueto@ucalgary.ca)
