Piled on those problems is the impact of climate change on wolverine habitat. Where coyotes exploit developed landscapes, they come into conflict with wolverines, and in these fights, wolverines lose. They can also be sensitive to recreation.Īll this human activity makes life better for wolverines’ competitors-coyotes. People still trap wolverines in Canada, often far too heavily. Their habitat is degraded by resource development, including forestry, oil and gas, and roads. As scavengers, taking food from a hungry bear or pack of wolves is a risky lifestyle. Wolverine distribution in North America.Īs tough as they are, wolverines are sometimes eaten by other big predators. Wolverines are restricted to northern countries in Eurasia and are killed as predators of reindeer herds in Fennoscandia. Today, in the United States, only around 300 remain in the lower 48 states - mainly in the snowy strongholds and high elevations of the mountain ranges. But they used to live from coast to coast and as far south as New Mexico. South of the wide Arctic range, wolverines can be found only in the western boreal forest and mountains. Since the Europeans colonized North America, fur trapping and landscape development shrank the wolverine range drastically. These traits make them vulnerable to human impacts around the world. They are naturally low in number and defend territories as large as 500-1,000 square kilometres, or sometimes more. They are slow to reproduce and have an average of two cubs, or kits, every two to three years. Wolverines are private, generally solitary, species. Our 20 years of synthesized research about wolverines shows that the best ways to protect remaining wolverine populations are to reduce trapping, minimize predator control pressures, and connect the large blocks of intact habitat they need to survive. Scientists estimate there are more than 10,000 wolverines in Canada, but population densities vary a lot and numbers are difficult to estimate. Wolverine numbers are declining globally due to heavy trapping and predator killing by humans as well as habitat loss, climate change and various other factors. While wolverines have been filmed hunting caribou in Norway and observed battling black bears over food in Yellowstone, they are extremely vulnerable, rarely seen and hard to study. Their sharp claws and strong jaws allow them to feast on carcasses and hunt species of all sizes from ground squirrels to elk. Wolverines’ snowshoe-like paws, heavy frost-resistant fur and powerful muscles let them thrive in some of the coldest places on Earth. These large land-dwelling weasels evolved to scramble up trees and climb steep, snowy mountains. The fact that the Gray wolverine lived in an environment that also had cold-intolerant plants and animals, like alligators, suggests that wolverines may have become cold-adapted relatively recently, during the Pleistocene ice ages.Īccording to Samuels, “The new wolverine species is another example of how unique the Gray Fossil Site is, and how much we can potentially learn from continued study of the site.Present day wolverines, which emerged during the ice age, have been declining globally despite their many adaptions to live in challenging, rugged environments. Previously, the site was thought to be from the late Miocene or early Pliocene Epoch, between 7 and 4.5 million years old. That age means the new wolverine from Gray is more than 1 million years older than any other wolverine known.įeatured in the current issue of PeerJ, the study reports that wolverines likely evolved in North America from an ancestor similar to the fisher, a close living relative of wolverines, and then later dispersed to Asia. Joshua Samuels and Steven Wallace, assistant professor and professor, respectively, in the Department of Geosciences at East Tennessee State University, and Keila Bredehoeft, museum specialist for ETSU’s Center of Excellence in Paleontology, has described a new species of wolverine ( Gulo sudorus) from the Gray Fossil Site and redefined the understanding of wolverine evolution.īased on mammal species found over the last decade, the group provides a new and greatly refined estimate of the age of the Gray Fossil Site, between 4.9 and 4.5 million years old, placing it in the early Pliocene Epoch.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |