TUNDRA DWELLING WOLVERINES- ENDANGERED OR NOT?

Wolverines are the biggest land-dwelling weasel family animals. They utilize snow-pack for preying, denning, resting and other requirements. Determining the places and amounts of availability of snow will let us know whether the decrease in snow cover in the Arctic region will make the tundra-dwelling wolverines more helpless to climate change. This determination is envisioned as a key to deciding its classification under the Endangered Species Act.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service stated that to make an informed decision on this, more info on the association between wolverine distribution and constant snow at the den-scale is needed.

They mapped the snow at den-site scale using aerial photography. Through an advanced methodology developed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), they have also have fitted remote cameras and GPS collars in Alaska's North Slope in sub- zero temperatures to recognize wolverine habitats and monitor them.

This equipment will document how these animals utilize the landscape from a time of complete snow coverage to bare tundra. This will help scientists find out their diet, their snow usage pattern, their productivity, etc. This new info gathered will help inform an assessment of the wolverine population’s health. 

Content: www.sciencedaily.com