By Kylee Perez, 2-17-11
Wolverines are notoriously difficult to find in the wild. As climate
change begins to threaten their dens in the United States, researchers
say the animals could become even more rare.
New studies from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the
U.S. Forest service suggest that climate change will begin to affect the
snowpack that wolverines depend on to make their dens in the mountains
of Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming .
Synte Peacock, a geophysical scientist at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado,
focused on wolverines for her study because of a strong correlation
between available snowpack and the animals’ ability to successfully
produce offspring.
“[The snow] protects the kits from predators and it acts as insulation
against the cold,” Peacock said. “They’re 100 grams and pure white so
they need a thick insulator.”
Peacock used three different emissions scenarios—low, medium and high
emission models —to determine when the snowpack would disappear in
wolverine habitats in the lower 48 states. In the high-emission
scenario—in which humans made no efforts to curtail greenhouse
gasses—the wolverine’s habitat would begin losing snowpack by 2050 and
disappear by 2100.
Because the effects of climate change are not immediate, the wolverine
is not protected under the Endangered Species Act. But it remains on the
list of candidates.
Other studies by the U.S. Forest Service suggest that an increasingly
fragmented habitat due to climate change may pose a more immediate
threat to reproduction than overall loss of snowpack.
The wolverine’s habitat is naturally fragmented, said Jeff Copeland, wildlife biologist and co-founding director of the Wolverine Foundation,
a nonprofit based in Bozeman, Montana. Decreased snowpack can further
fragment the habitat, making it difficult for animals to find other
animals to mate with. This could be a major problem in a species that
lives in low population densities—only 250-300 live in the lower 48
states—in a very hostile habitat.
“The issue becomes more that these populations will become farther apart
and won’t be able to as effectively mate,” Copeland said.
“Overall you’re going to be losing snowpack over the next century,” said
Kevin McKelvey, a research ecologist at the US Forest Service’s Rocky
Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, Colorado. “It will define the
areas of contiguous snowpack to smaller and smaller areas. It’s still
out there…but what you see is all the little peripheral areas that don’t
have a lot so snowpack go away.”
Responding to the effects of climate change is an ongoing process,
according to McKelvey. New technologies will allow models to become more
refined and the International Panel on Climate Change
will continue to refine its emissions scenarios, which is why it is
important to have multiple takes on the issue to see where they agree.
“Standing where we are right now this is what we think is going to
happen, five years from now we might think something different,” said
McKelvey. “We give the forest managers the best data we have now.”
Essays in the Range blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are
solely responsible for the content.
Originally posted at NewWest.net
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