Wolverine: State Threatened There are only few of them left, Save it now!

Have you ever seen Wolverine? I have seen only a footprint near my house and that is very special nothing else has that kind or even near foot print.

Endangered Status: State threatened and federal candidate species

• Physical description: Brown with a pale stripe across the top of head and down the side of body
• Size: Largest member of the weasel family at 26 to 34 inches in length and 24-40 pounds
• Territory: May travel extensively over a multi-state range
• Behavior: Fierce predator that will attack larger, wounded or weak animals
• Population: Unknown if any exist in California

If you ask Yosemite National Park scientists the status is of the wolverine in the park, they will reply that they just don’t know. Evidence of wolverines (Gulo gulo) in California has not been scientifically verified since the 1920s. The last confirmed Sierra wolverine was shot as a specimen in 1922. Rumored sightings occur every year in Sequoia National Park, just south of Yosemite, and in the northern part of the state. The California Department of Fish and Game lists the wolverine as present but threatened. The department indicates receiving about 150 sightings of this largely nocturnal animal during the past several decades, typically at about 8,000 feet in elevation.

Excitement rippled through the California scientific community in late February of 2008 when a wolverine was photographed in the Tahoe National Forest while an Oregon State University student conducted research on pine martens with a remote-controlled camera. DNA tests of collected scat samples, however, prove the animal is related to wolverines in the Rocky Mountains rather than historic California specimens found only in museums. How the photographed wolverine got to California is unknown, but the species frequently travels long distances. One wolverine in Wyoming fitted with a tracking collar, for instance, covered 543 miles over 42 days before its collar fell off.

The North American wolverine resembles a small bear and acts as fierce as a grizzly. Their jaws are very powerful and are adapted to crush and shear frozen meat and bones. Wolverines subsist on a variety of foods including small- and medium-sized mammals, birds, insects, berries, and fungi. Carrion, especially in the form of large ungulates, is believed to be an important component of the diet, particularly during winter.

Wolverines, which have disappeared from almost half of their North American range, are found primarily in Washington, Montana, and Idaho. Historically, wolverines occurred in the remote and high-elevation areas of California, ranging from the northwestern part of the state to the southern Sierra Nevada. Studies have mapped some of reported sightings in Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon national parks. Wolverines, it’s believed, were probably never numerous in California due to their extensive home range size and small amount of suitable habitat in the state. Renowned scientist Joseph Grinnell suggested in 1937 that fur trappers might have reduced wolverines to as few as 15 pairs by the 1930s.

Source: National Park Service