Wolverines

[00:00:00] Alex Re: Hello. Welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you, you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. On this episode, we're You'll be learning about an animal with a pretty mean reputation, but if you've ever listened to this podcast before, you'll know that how people perceive animals might not always be what they're actually like.

[00:00:31] To help me talk about them in much more detail, I sat down with Douglas Chadwick or Chad for short. He's a wildlife biologist who has dedicated his life to studying animals of all shapes and sizes. He's written articles for the National Geographic Society, as well as 16 books, one of which we'll hear about today.

[00:00:53] So join me and Chad as we talk about a mammal you may have only heard about in comic books, the wolverine.

[00:01:16] If you want to know what a wolverine looks like, just picture a kind of miniature bear mixed with a weasel. They have thick brown fur, a bushy tail, small ears, and long claws. And normally, I'd give you more of an introduction to our animal before I start the interview, but we covered so much in our chat, I just wanted you to hear it from the expert himself.

[00:01:38] Now let's learn a little bit more about our guest so we can start talking about wolverines. Hi, Chad. How are you doing?

[00:01:46] Douglas Chadwick: I am doing well. Thanks. I'm in Montana and in an early spring, so life is good.

[00:01:51] Alex Re: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. I cannot wait to get started talking about wolverines. But before we do any of that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started your career studying animals?

[00:02:04] Douglas Chadwick: Oh, okay. Uh, my dad was a geologist and he was a field geologist and I used to go out every summer with him from the age of six on and, you know, I was, I was a terrible budding geologist.

[00:02:19] I'd be young. Moving stones around and he come by and go, Oh, good. I'll bet you remember what I told you about that kind of rock. And I go, no, there was a really cool beetle under it. I totally forgot what kind of rock it is and I don't care. But in the meantime, along the way, maybe recognizing my inner geek, he gave me a old fashioned, but top of the line, a microscope when I was a kid.

[00:02:45] And so suddenly I'm running around the house hunting up, oh, you know, dead flies, dust bunnies, scabs, you know, anything I can find, hair off the, off the household critters, and Looking at it, under 50, 100, 400 power, and then I started looking at pond water, and there was this whole universe of living things, and so my fascination with larger creatures, and the whole world suddenly became alive through the little ones too.

[00:03:16] So from then on, I was steadfastly in the grip of curiosity, and that's, I never wanted to be anything besides a naturalist. Not even a rock star, you know, just follow my nose and what's interesting. And I've been lucky that I was able to work in wildlife biology as a journalist and also as a scientist.

[00:03:40] So the journalist part took me around the world and introduced me to all kinds of other creatures and ecosystems and from coral reefs to the Arctic, to the mountaintops down to the jungle. So. One lucky break after another just driven by, uh, wanting to know what's next and still turning over rocks going cool.

[00:04:01] Wow. What is that thing? So that's hasn't changed a bit.

[00:04:05] Alex Re: That's awesome. And I love that you can keep that, that curiosity that you had as a child. And really use it as a passion in your life.

[00:04:14] Douglas Chadwick: Well, most of the, the really good wildlife biologists and scientists that I've worked with in the field are, I think they're mostly 11 year old kids at heart.

[00:04:27] I mean, there are the academic types that talk a different fight, but it is still a curiosity driven approach to, to a life's work.

[00:04:35] Alex Re: Yeah, definitely. And you're also a founding board member for the Vital Ground Foundation. Uh, what is the mission of this organization and what do you do there?

[00:04:45] Douglas Chadwick: Well, when I started my work in wildlife, I was doing mountain goat research up in the back country. And while I was there, my job was to learn about mountain goats and why they were declining at a worrisome rate. And while I was there, a new road came in, there was clear cutting in the backcountry right next to the border of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The grizzlies were shot out, the goats were shot out, and I was fairly naive.

[00:05:14] I was out there to just get information, hand it to the agencies, and say, here's what we need to do. And then I realized that there were a lot of policies in place that were not working for at least certain species of wildlife. The more sensitive ones are the slow, slower to reproduce, more habitat specialists.

[00:05:34] And this was almost all on public lands, National Forest, Bureau of Land Management, so on. And I realized the public didn't really realize what was going on outside the local area. And so, yeah, I could get noisy. I can write. I can, You know, wave my arms and be a cheerleader for wildlife, but, and I can go to meetings, and I can write letters to my congressman and all that.

[00:05:58] But I wanted to get information out to people, but at the same time, I wanted to, what can I do now? What can, how can one person make a difference? And I looked at the model of the Nature Conservancy and some other organizations, but this was long ago. There weren't many that were dealing with private landowners.

[00:06:16] And I'm in a region where we have abundant mountain ranges, and they tend to serve as strongholds for, well, I'd say one of the most intact wildlife communities left on the globe. You know, because of the public lands, they're too rugged for people to get in and really exploit all of it. And some has been protected in parks and preserves.

[00:06:37] And at first we were opportunistic. If somebody had a great piece of property, they wanted to leave it as it is for their kids and grandkids. We could do a conservation easement with that landowner. No regulations, no politics, no squabbling and ideologies. It's just, what do you want to do? Here's what we think you could do.

[00:06:58] Keep ranching, keep farming, keep selectively logging, but leave it available for wildlife for certain seasons, or at least to move through. And I thought, God, what's wrong with this plan? They get paid to do what they've been doing, and the wildlife gets a place to move safely between populations. And as wildlife is always doing, and as it has to do to adapt to changing conditions, especially these days.

[00:07:23] So we use the grizzly bear as our symbol. Because there's a lot of studies showing that if an area, grizzlies carry a whole wildlife community on their backs in the sense that if the place is good enough, big enough, free enough, high quality enough habitat to support a grizzly bear, it's going to work for trumpeter swans and trout and elk and wolverines.

[00:07:45] We don't do. Politics, we don't, you know, we don't get sidetracked into identities and all the things that go on in conservation battles. It's just helping people who want to keep things free and open for the wildlife they enjoy.

[00:07:59] Alex Re: Yeah, that that's amazing. And it sounds like that organization is. It's really putting in the hard work to, to help these animals.

[00:08:06] And I think a lot of people don't realize that when a population is cut off from intermingling with other populations, that can really impact their health long term. There's a lot of genetic defects that they could get, and they're just more susceptible to different natural factors.

[00:08:25] Douglas Chadwick: Exactly. Yeah. In, in breeding and then having all your eggs in one basket sort of affects and freedom to roam.

[00:08:33] Nature's always changing and animals are always adapting. And if you give them the freedom to roam, we don't have to go micromanage all these little places. The system, the ecosystem, the, Population dynamics will work as they always have and then I think we've saved ourselves a lot of, a lot of work down the road, you know, jumping from one crisis to another, trying to solve it in these isolated areas. I think we can coexist. That's the best way I can think of to try to coexist with nature.

[00:09:04] Alex Re: Yeah, absolutely. And, and you were saying that you've worked with, different species, but today we're going to focus mainly on wolverines. So people might not know much about them. What is their evolutionary lineage and what other species are they most related to?

[00:09:20] Douglas Chadwick: I think everybody knows honey badgers, right? From a couple of infamous videos. The weasel family is one of the most widespread and diverse on the planet. Wolverine is the largest land dwelling member of the, that's so we don't count sea otters, which are also weasel relatives and, and otters. The other thing to bring out is, they're called gulo gulo, the glut, that's what it means in Latin.

[00:09:51] And it's because people used to come by and see one feeding on a giant moose or elk carcass, whether it killed it or, you know, he found it dead. They're hunters and scavengers. They would come back a couple hours later and the whole carcass would be gone. So, they just assumed this thing was just a glut.

[00:10:10] Roman style, like eating until it threw up somewhere and then came back and ate some more. I mean, anyway, they had all these stories about how gluttonous they were, but they were cashing food, especially in snow banks and stuff. That's their nature's refrigerator. They are known as ferocious, vile smelling, demon of the North woods, the devil of the Of the forest, you know, all kinds of names about them, but nobody really knew anything about them.

[00:10:39] So that's what I hope we can talk about. They're a mammal like other mammals. We just didn't know much about it. And we had a lot of stories that filled in the gaps and almost none of them are true.

[00:10:50] Alex Re: That's really interesting. I was going to ask about their behavior. Are they really the aggressive animals that people assume that they are?

[00:10:59] Douglas Chadwick: Well, they were. The one reason I get asked a question on the trail sometimes is what do I do if I meet a wolverine, you know, do I play dead? I mean, how dangerous are they? I hear all this stuff about them. And I think a lot of the stories, there are wolverines, by the way, in the old world, across the northern hemisphere, and like the wolverines here, they've retracted their range towards the north.

[00:11:24] Mostly because of increasing human density in their historical habitat. We had wolverines down in California, New Mexico, and now they're found in just the northern Rockies and the north Cascades. And there are, by the way, there are fewer than 300 south of Canada in the whole lower 48 states. Wow. But anyway, people had heard these stories about how ferocious they are and attacking people.

[00:11:51] Well, I'd say a lot of them came from. Wherever myths and stories come from, if they meet you around a corner in the trail, they're gonna, you're gonna get a snarl, and you're gonna, you're gonna think twice about taking another step forward, but there's never been a case of a free roaming wolverine attacking a human in all of history, ever.

[00:12:14] Not once. But my guess is that if you, if I were to walk towards one caught in a steel jawed trap, it's been there for who knows how long, you're going to get the full on ferocious, going to rip your heart out, wolverine. They're just a cool critter. They do have ferocious fights over territories. And I say sometimes with larger carnivores, much larger carnivores over a carcass, but I don't know.

[00:12:43] If it's fair to call them, they can be ferocious. Let's just put it that way, but not nothing to do with us, as far as I can tell. And I've handled a lot of them.

[00:12:52] Alex Re: I mean, and I think that's really important for people to know, because if we can remove that negative stigma of them, then maybe we can get more people to care about their conservation.

[00:13:03] And I kind of want to talk more about some of their adaptations that they have that help them survive in the wild.

[00:13:11] Douglas Chadwick: You bet. Well, extra large heart, extra big lungs, an amped up metabolism, and that high body temperature I mentioned that they can outcompete other predators up in the high country because they can travel over snow on big snowshoe feet, almost as big as my hands, which your audience can't see, but I'm showing you, um, but what they're wearing snowshoes, And they can kind of, I wouldn't say skip across snowfields, but they don't sink in.

[00:13:44] And if they're hunting prey that's post holing through the snow, they've got a great advantage. And if they're competing with other carnivores, just being able to cover that ground and find something to eat, they've got a distinct advantage. The other thing I mentioned was caching food in snowbanks. Not only during the winter, they'll dig a deep hole and put it in the deep freeze and then come back and eat it later.

[00:14:12] There's not, you know, a super abundance of food in the high country where they live. So they have these huge territories that if you can cover the way a wolverine does, you'll find something. And then you can store it. And they also in the summer find leftover snow banks to do the same thing. Or they find boulder fields with ice cold water running underneath them and they cash their food in that fridge.

[00:14:35] So that's the other way they're tied. And the big one is the female's den in January, February. And if not a little sooner, but they don't hibernate. They're not living in their den in the winter. The females are giving birth there. And that den is going to be under eight to 12 feet of snow. And it's going to have tunnels that run for dozens of feet in different directions.

[00:15:01] So I'll have. Chambers to eat in chambers to relieve themselves in nest areas where they'd shoot up a bunch of bark and they, you know, sleeping rooms, TV game rooms. I don't know what all they cut down there, but elaborate, but it needs to be under that snow just like a bears. Dan does. Because it's insulating, it's like a snow cave for humans, and it's also hiding the kits from passing larger predators when mom is away off hunting to bring food back to the kits, as the younger call it.

[00:15:37] It's a thermal shelter. Uh, adaptation, but wolverines are like number of animals in the North. They've got small ears and they don't have many places they can lose heat. So they really are tied to that kind of post age periglacial environment as scientists call it.

[00:15:54] Alex Re: So, I mean, there's just so many different ways that they're really well adapted to their environment. And it even comes down to just. the size of their ears in, in helping them survive, which is really amazing.

[00:16:07] Douglas Chadwick: Yeah. I, and I should mention this, say they, they arose during the ice ages. There was a, there was a Wolverine species that was about the size of a black bear. Now that's one. You wouldn't want to know.

[00:16:21] I'm guessing, but they've been around, they, the species we know arose during the later latter part of the ice age, and they've stayed pretty closely tied to a lot of those kinds of conditions. So that, that, of course, makes them a pretty great indicator of changing climates these days. Yeah, I worked on a project for a number of years.

[00:16:46] In Glacier Park, where we radiotag the animals, and I know you want to talk about that later on, probably, but I'll just say that when Glacier National Park was created in 1910, there were about 150 glaciers. We now have 22, but things are changing in the high country. I'm old, but it makes me feel older to go into places I used to hike and see a glacier all the way across the mountain headwall.

[00:17:08] I'm old, but it makes me feel older to go into places I used to hike and see a glacier all the way across the mountain headwall. And drifts down much, you know, below it and now it's these tattered remnants of snow here and there. So, it's a real change. The forest is moving uphill. The tundra is getting smaller.

[00:17:28] The alpine tundra. So, people can have whatever opinion they want. It's changing. And this is an animal that is going to have to adapt or I don't think it will go well in the future.

[00:17:42] Alex Re: Yeah, definitely. There's still so much to uncover about wolverines, but first we're going to take a quick break.

[00:18:01] Today, I want to give a shout out to Rocky from Maryland. Maryland. His favorite animal is a lion. Did you know that lions are able to jump 36 feet in length? That's about as long as a school bus.

[00:18:24] Now let's get back to the episode. And I was actually, that was going to be my next question about radio tagging. So can you talk about how you tracked them and why you were tracking them in the first place?

[00:18:37] Douglas Chadwick: There've been very little study of wolverines. I never heard them mentioned much when I was going through wildlife biology, getting my master's degree.

[00:18:46] Wait, I'll back up. I'll say there were no wolverines in the lower 48 as of 1920. Oh, wow. Unlimited trapping, shooting, and eventually poisons, which really hit scavengers hard. Along with, you know, reducing or taking out a lot of other creatures, but they did come back, but they were infrequently seen. They have a very low natural density because of these big territorial and fiercely defended territory ranges that they use.

[00:19:17] And the Fish and Wildlife Service kept turning down petitions to protect them, to list them, maybe under the Endangered Species Act. They'd say, there's just not enough known about them. And I thought, that's not a great conservation plan. When in doubt, do nothing. But, they had a point. There was, yeah, we didn't have a census of wolverines.

[00:19:38] We weren't doing much at all, except Montana continued to trap them. Uh, and they had a fairly generous trapping season for a long time. So some of the biologists would do a transect, you know, just walk or ski in a straight line across a portion of the mountains and count tracks that they encountered.

[00:20:00] And they'd say, you know, we're finding wolverine tracks in most every valley and we think they're holding up fine. You know, we don't know much about them, but we think they're plenty. And we got radios on wolverines to find out what they're really doing. And we came back and said, you know, those guys are right.

[00:20:18] But that was one wolverine leaving tracks in those 10 ballots he went through or she went through and who knew. I had, we had no idea that these guys had such enormous rangers and were so constantly on the move. That's their lifestyle that allows them to survive in the high country and outcompete other creatures.

[00:20:39] So the challenge was with so few wolverines in any one place, I'll jump ahead to say we, we later found out that in all of million acre plus Glacier National Park, There are probably 35 wolverines tops.

[00:20:55] Alex Re: Oh, wow.

[00:20:55] Douglas Chadwick: That's all there's room for, given their territorial and habitat requirements. But we caught a good portion of them.

[00:21:03] And we caught some repeatedly. And got radios on them. And then, how do you track wolverines? Where you could do it old school, where you just go out and follow the tracks. Try to interpret what they were doing. Nobody can keep up with a wolverine for long, but the other way to do it is to get radios on them, and by doing that, we didn't just find these, this enormous range use by them, the territorial considerations, but we, we also found them climbing straight up mountain walls, going to the summits of some of these startling peaks in the middle of winter.

[00:21:41] We still don't know why they do that, but maybe it was just in the way of where they wanted to go. I don't know, and I don't think anybody does, but they've got these big feet, and they've got claws on the end of them, so they've got building crampons. They've got tremendous strength and apparently are fearless.

[00:21:58] Because they went up some extraordinary stuff and it, it just, the radios were able to, we, none of us like capturing and manipulating animals, especially one as wild or woolly as a wolverine. It's sort of the essence of wild. But you know, it's the old justification of, well, we can't save them if we don't come up with some data.

[00:22:19] And people can't care about them if they don't know much about them. So. That op the radio data showed all kinds of things. It showed males, which were supposed to be a deadly threat to the young, uh, denning female. Well, maybe a foreign male would be, but we found the father of the young coming back to the den and joining the female and the kits.

[00:22:45] And it looks like they were bringing food as well. We found wolverines, which were supposed to be solitary, you know, too, too surly to get along at all except to mate. But we found males and females traveling together outside of the mating season. They were supposed to kick their young out. At the age of six months and just say, yeah, we're done here.

[00:23:09] You guys get, get out of Dodge, go out in the big world and contend with those other bigger carnivores and established Wolverines and territories and just somehow find a home. Well, they did start to become independent at six months, but then with radio cracking, we found. Oh, wait a minute. Today, this juvenile that had been on his own for a few days came back and joined his mom for a while.

[00:23:34] And then a week later, it's like, oh my gosh, that same wolverine now is traveling with his dad. So, I'm not saying they're not doting parents, by our standard, but there was continuing relationship, and more importantly, those juvenile wolverines were allowed to stay within the mother's and father's territory for almost two years, learning how to be a grown up wolverine, where to hunt, how to hunt, how to find carcasses, whatever they needed to learn.

[00:24:06] They had a long learning period in relative safety. And that changed the whole kind of image of, of what a wolverine is.

[00:24:15] Alex Re: That is really interesting and it just goes to show, like, even if people have these preconceived notions about, about specific animals, if you go out and actually do the research, it might not be what people think at all.

[00:24:29] Douglas Chadwick: No, and, and, you know, we started off talking about curiosity, I think, and the reason I, I did this work with the Wolverine project in between stories, I was doing for National Geographic on whales and smell leopards and coral reefs and all kinds of things. I'd come back and go hang out with wolverines and it was because on any given day or any hour, any minute, you might see something that was unknown.

[00:24:57] You might discover something. I mean, I'm not a very hot shot scientist. I just willing to sit in a blizzard for a long time or go up over an avalanche slope, but you were discovering new things all the time about them and it was, uh, boy, that'll get you up in the morning and keep you going.

[00:25:13] Alex Re: Absolutely. Yeah. And could you tell us a little bit about your book that you wrote, The Wolverine Way?

[00:25:20] Douglas Chadwick: Well, of course. Have you ever had an author say no? Not, not, not so far. Well, I talked about how little was known about wolverines and the fact that they just weren't on anybody's radar. Professionals are public. And here we are with a very small number distributing a huge bunch of mountains in the Pacific Northwest here.

[00:25:46] And I wasn't going to write a book. I was just going to help out because I, the guys I knew, I knew some of the guys on the Wolverine projects. It involves skiing into the back country in the winter when you're the only person in the park, staying in patrol cabins, the rangers use. And that's sort of like a pretty fine vacation to me, never mind the science. I'd like to make it sound like it was all about the search for truth and justice in the American way, but it was just a great chance to explore the mountains. Again, I used to study mountain goats in that same country. I fell in love with the place. But then I ended up visiting other researchers in the North Cascades, in Canada, in Wyoming, in Idaho.

[00:26:30] and learning more about wolverines in different areas as well. And that kept me going for five years. And then a number of groups started, okay, we've got some basic information from radios, but we still don't know how many wolverines there are. So you can gather data by just putting out like a post or, you know, some device.

[00:26:53] The scut bait and can take a picture of a wolverine that comes to visit it, or at least snag a little bit of his fur for DNA analysis. And then you can add by, you know, turn it over to the biochemist and they can sell you individual identities, family relationships, population structure, all that kind of thing just from having some fur.

[00:27:14] I said, these are some of the most charismatic mammals we've got on the continent. Most charismatic I've met anywhere, and they're just way cool. They're wilder than wild. They are an indicator species for climate, and they are an indicator species for the need for large connected landscapes to save whole wildlife communities.

[00:27:35] I, I'm going to write a book. And I remember coming back and telling my wife, what are you scribbling on now? And I'm going to write a book about wolverines. Oh, great. That'll put us over the top. And you get, you have five other scientists and three of your friends are going to buy a book. I said, yeah, I know.

[00:27:53] But Patagonia. Yeah. You know, these are people at Patagonia who kind of live to climb and I knew some of them, we talked it over and they find, you know, why wouldn't they do a book about an animal that climbs to live and can outclimb, you know, whatever their great, their heroic climbers do. And it is pretty amazing.

[00:28:16] Wolverines are out there doing it 24, 7, 365 days a year. And also. Because it is a climate animal, and it is an indirect way of conserving whole communities and wild landscapes, they published the book, and it did well.

[00:28:36] Alex Re: Yeah, and they deserve that recognition.

[00:28:38] Douglas Chadwick: Yeah, the least they could do for many a great day out in their part of the world.

[00:28:45] Alex Re: Yeah, and can you talk a little bit about why they're important to the ecosystems that they live in?

[00:28:52] Douglas Chadwick: I can, but it's always a tricky business because it's the underlying question is what good is a whatever. Right. What good is a grizzly? What good is the wolf? Well, grizzlies and wolves are keystone predators, and in the case of a grizzly, a keystone omnivore is turning over big portions of the earth, digging for roots, it's preying on things, it's distributing the seeds of tens of thousands of berries.

[00:29:21] You know, across the landscape and nice fertile piles and droppings. Wolverines, if they, well, they have all virtually disappeared from a lot of the lower 48 and ecosystem didn't collapse. And, you know, maybe there was a shift that scientists would notice in animals that were sharing some of these carcasses.

[00:29:44] having more luck or worse luck obtaining their own nutrition. But I don't think I can make a, you know, a case like if. If we don't save Wolverines, the sky's going to fall. And I know that wasn't the intent of your question, but their role in the ecosystem is just as one of many. If I, if I go out and find a carcass these days, it's actually really encouraging, not for the animal that died, but 20 years ago, say, would never have seen this because now around that, let's say it's an elk carcass died over winter.

[00:30:20] Your wolf tracks. There are cougar tracks, there are grizzly tracks, there are coyote tracks, there are lynx tracks, and there's wolverine tracks. And it's a complete wildlife community functioning as it always has. That, to me, is reason enough, you know, to say what good is a wolverine. But the other part is just, it's an inspirational creature.

[00:30:44] But I, I can't say that it's not a keystone species. It doesn't play a pivotal role in the community that most people would notice. I feel like I'm letting the wolverines down here a little bit. No, not at all.

[00:30:57] Alex Re: I think it's a good lesson that it doesn't have to add this significant value to humans or to the ecosystem to still be worth saving.

[00:31:09] Douglas Chadwick: Thank you for summing it up.

[00:31:11] Alex Re: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And what are some of the problems that wolverines are facing today?

[00:31:17] Douglas Chadwick: Well, I, I think was the danger isn't that going to run out of snow tomorrow, cooler temperatures, but they're going to be increasingly restricted rather than having these subpopulations in touch with each other.

[00:31:30] That's going to be a real challenge. They're going to be more and more confined to the high country. There's a lot more human disturbance in the high country than there used to be, and that's just, that's from people like me hiking, people backcountry skiing, as well as the most common disturbance is snowmobiling and, you know, mechanical intrusion, because they really do react to that, and that causes stress, and it causes females to move their dens.

[00:31:54] And as these winter playgrounds shrink, we're going to have more people going there as well as the animals holing up in that area. So that's one, one real problem. And the other is trapping of other carnivore species in wolverine core habitat is still allowed. And there's been upsurge in trapping, particularly for wolves.

[00:32:19] In the western states, the same places Wolverines are. Montana, chiefly, portions of Idaho, northern Wyoming, and then the North Cascades of Washington. And they call it accidental catch. The other terms are non target traps or incidental take of a Wolverine. That's still allowed and that's being debated right now.

[00:32:41] And that's going to be another set of lawsuits. But my opinion anyway is that wolverines are the ultimate scavengers. They are very curious. They investigate everything. They do get caught in some of these traps. And it's put down as an incidental take. And I'm saying with a population of fewer than 300, well 300 or fewer in the lower 48, of which maybe 10 to 15 percent are successfully breeding adults.

[00:33:08] It's a very small number. There's no such thing as an incidental wolverine south of Canada, and they're still legally trapped in Canada, and they've found that it's taken down the wolverine population that we were, I think a lot of people were sort of consciously or unconsciously counting on that to replenish the lower 48.

[00:33:27] I'm not making a plea here for, you know, pro trapping, anti trapping. I'm just saying that this is one animal that needs. A break until proven otherwise, rather than see what we can get away with and hope for the best.

[00:33:40] Alex Re: Yep, absolutely.

[00:33:41] Douglas Chadwick: I'm seeing Wolverines in the news lately. They're talking about reintroduction to Colorado, to California.

[00:33:47] So that's the good part, the good news to share. And they are going to face a lot of problems that I don't see any we can't solve. And I think that getting them listed as, as threatened is. You know, I want him to come off the list as soon as we can. That's going to mean there's a lot of wolverines reoccupying some of their traditional range.

[00:34:08] And I think we can have these guys back in our wildlife communities, a lot of areas. And once you see wolverines, a wolverine moving across a mountain slope, the contours of that grandeur up there, it just makes, Everything seemed taller, wilder, more free. And I hope more people get to share that. That's what's part of what it's all about.

[00:34:32] It's not about us, but it really is, you know, it's going to get the public behind you. And, and, uh, I think, I think good, good things are going to happen from here on. It's going to be a slog, but we'll make it. It took 30 years to get them listed.

[00:34:45] Alex Re: Yeah. I mean, I love to hear, to hear that you're optimistic about it. And, and is there anything that the average person can do to help wolverines?

[00:34:54] Douglas Chadwick: I've thought about that, and I would just say, wherever you live, you can, the great thing about our democracy, the great thing about being an American citizen, you own one third of this country as public land, and I know it's asking a lot for people to get involved in land management issues, but it's going to affect a whole lot of creatures.

[00:35:17] So that's one way to do it. The other is to spread the word, continue spreading the word to others. And, you know, beyond that, if you live out West, you always need volunteers. That's what I was. I wasn't, I was never paid to go out and, you know, hike my rear end off and freeze to death in the middle of winter, trying to catch a wolverine, but it's.

[00:35:40] They can always use them if you're a skier or a backcountry user, you can contribute citizen science. And, uh, there's still a heck of a lot to know about wolverines. And the more we know, the better they're going to do.

[00:35:53] Alex Re: Definitely. And I think that's a great note to end it on. So Chad, thank you so much for coming on again. I really appreciate you sharing all that you know about wolverines. And I, I learned a whole lot, and I, I hope you enjoyed talking with me as well.

[00:36:09] Douglas Chadwick: Oh, I sure did, but thanks for, yeah, thanks for giving Wolverines a forum. I, I, I'd have brought some with me, you know, um, I know we're audio, but they've got a snarl that sounds like, you know, when you approach a trap, if it's quiet, you probably caught a lynx.

[00:36:27] You know, went in for the bait and the traps, by the way, are these big wooden boxes that they can't injure themselves trying to get out of it would be the case. If it was a jaw trap or a steel cage or something. But if you got a Wolverine, you approach the trap. You'll hear something that sounds very much like, I guess we don't know what a velociraptor sounds like, but it sounds like a chainsaw or a Harley Davidson mating or having a big quarrel or something.

[00:36:54] It's designed to intimidate. It's a heck of a noise. And that's one way they can contend with these larger carnivores over a carcass, is. I think, you know, people have seen bears give way, you know, a hundred, several hundred pound grizzly bears. I think they're looking at this little critter and going, I don't think it could kill me, but this thing is nuts and I'm going to get really scratched up, you know?

[00:37:23] So I'm sorry I couldn't bring any with me, but, uh, they're kind of hard to manage in the house anyway. So, but anyway, thanks again, Alex has really been great and wish you well on your future podcast.

[00:37:34] Alex Re: Thank you so much. There's still so much to learn about wolverines and they still really need our help. It was so great to have Chad on the show to talk about them and you can just tell that he's really passionate about their conservation.

[00:37:49] What's awesome is that if we take measures to help wolverines by making sure that they have enough land to roam free, it's going to help so many other species in the process. If you want to help wolverines and other animals that live in their environment, check out the Vital Ground Foundation. The Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Land Trust Alliance.

[00:38:10] Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of wolverines. You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at onwildlife. org. You can also email us with any questions at onwildlife. podcast at gmail. com. And you can follow us on Instagram at On underscore Wildlife or on TikTok at On Wildlife. And don't forget to tune in next month for another awesome episode. And that's On Wildlife.

[00:38:47] Jess Avellino: You've been listening to On Wildlife with Alex Re. On Wildlife provides general educational information on various topics as a public service, which should not be construed as professional financial real estate tax or legal advice. These are our personal opinions only. Please refer to our full disclaimer policy on our website for full details.