Near extinction in 2003, Island marmot population growing with group's help
In 2003, researchers could find only 22 Vancouver Island marmots left in the wild.
“That's about as endangered as it can possibly get,” said Adam Taylor, executive director of the Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Foundation.
The foundation, a charity, was founded in 1999 as a response to growing calls from many scientists and community members for action to revive the wild population of Vancouver Island marmots.
A direct result of the foundation's work, the number of Vancouver Island marmots is now just more than 300.
There is still a long way to go restore the species back to a healthy population, but Taylor has hope.
“I really think that there's an opportunity to truly recover the Vancouver Island marmot to the point where it doesn't need conservation breeding,” said Taylor. “It's decades of work to bring the species back, but (it's) possible.”
The species of marmot lives only on Vancouver Island and has very specific living conditions. It burrows on steep avalanche chutes and mountains covered in snow in subalpine and alpine ecosystems. These areas are scraped free of trees, and the open spaces help marmots detect predators.
While no single specific factor is causing the marmot's decline, the Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Foundation's website says one of the main contributing factors is an increase in predation. This increase has been caused by human activity that introduced new prey species to the area and created roads that made it easier for predators to get to marmot colonies.
A 2005 B.C. government report said marmots have fared poorly in logged areas. Cut blocks can resemble the marmots' natural habitats, and the marmots will flock to the area, increasing their number in a small area. This population density makes them more vulnerable to diseases and predators.
Rising temperatures due to climate change are hurting their habitat, too. Increased temperatures mean much of the precipitation that used to fall as snow now falls as rain, which means the marmot's subalpine home is in the early stages of turning into forest, he said.
“And unfortunately, marmots don't survive in forests.”
He explained a single cougar can wipe out an entire marmot colony, and more trees make it hard for the marmots to detect such predators.
The count of the marmots in the wild was 303 in 2023, including 59 pups born that year.
The recovery foundation is supplementing food for wild marmots and working to restore their habitat. It has a captive breeding program on Mount Washington.
Marmots tend to leave their colony around the age of two in order to find another one to join. The marmots who leave are called dispersers, Taylor said.
In the early 2000s, there were barely any other colonies for the dispersers to find. Those that did leave their colony would just get lost. But Taylor said they are seeing more dispersers now.
“It's the beginning of that process of really building up what we call (a) metapopulation structure that the species really relied on in the past in order to thrive on Vancouver Island,” Taylor said.
This kind of success is rare with species at risk, and Taylor hasn't always had positive stories to tell. He said some species that may no longer be on Vancouver Island include western pond turtles, wolverines and the coastal vesper sparrow.
He said public support is vital. “Seventy-five per cent of our funding comes from the general public.”