Wolverines do not require protection, U.S. officials rule
The federal government said Thursday that it had decided against protecting wolverines, the elusive mammals that inspired a superhero and countless sports teams around America.
Despite fears that climate change threatens the animals’ habitat in the lower 48 states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday that wolverine populations were stable and that its own earlier concerns about the effects of global warming on the species had been overstated.
“We expect there to be enough snow where they need it, at the time of year they need it,” said Justin Shoemaker, a biologist with the agency.
Wolverines are thought to depend heavily on snow in large part because females give birth in dens they dig in snowbanks.
A coalition of environmentalists responded by vowing to sue again.
“With this decision, the Fish and Wildlife Service has abandoned its moral and legal obligation to protect these animals,” said Jonathan Proctor of Defenders of Wildlife, a group that advocates for imperiled species. “But we will not abandon our efforts.”
The case has pitted the advocates against the federal government and West
ern states where wolverines are found. Farm bureaus, snowmobile associations and the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil industry lobbying group, opposed listing wolverines as threatened or endangered.
Each side claimed to have science on its side, but below the surface of the battle were deep-seated cultural and political beliefs about how best to protect animals, how much power the government should wield over states and how humans should interact with nature in the first place.
“There is a group of people in the Northern Rockies that traps and snowmobiles and wears Carhartts, and another group that wears Patagonia and wants to see a wolverine track in the snow,” said Timothy Preso, a lawyer with Earthjustice, a non
profit organization that has helped lead the legal fight for environmental groups. “A lot of these issues are characterized by the tension between those people.”
At the center is a little-understood creature that inhabits the kinds of remote places humans do not.
About 300 wolverines live in the contiguous U.S., but scientists say there were never many below Canada and Alaska because of their population density and need for alpine habitat.
Wolverines range over vast areas of mountainous terrain. Typically no more than about 40 pounds, they sometimes take down prey as large as a yearling bull moose. Their jaws and teeth are so strong that they scavenge from carcasses that are frozen solid.