Interesting (at least to me).
Tim
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/wolveri...07195109990001
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Interesting (at least to me).
Tim
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/wolveri...07195109990001
Tim -
Thanks for posting the link.
Interesting read.
John
Thats good news. I am suprised its taken this long to finally get photo evidence of one with all the technology we have in finding animals, and the density of the people in cali-nevada area
Univ. of Michigan playing basketball in Calif this weekend?:rolleyes:
Shawn Sartorius, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the wolverine could be a long-lost California native, an immigrant from Washington or Idaho or a captive wolverine that had been released into the wild.
"It would be fantastic if it's a real California wolverine because they are a genetically distinct group that was probably isolated at least 2,000 years and possibly 12,000 years ago," Sartorius said. "That would be a pretty important find."
The above quote is from the linked site and really makes me shake my head. If there are so many options on the origin of this particular animal how could CA wolverines possibly be "isolated at least 200 years..." as he states? The whole thing is suspicious and reeks of other attempts made to limit land-use over the years. And generally that involves keeping outdoor folks out of the woods.
I got suspicious when the initial news story included references to land-use issues... Mounted wolverines are pretty easy to come by, especially in Michigan! ;)
art
Neat link, can't remember if I even saw one before.
I use to drink Wolverine when I was young I like the chocolate
flavored...
Steve
Ummm ... Steve ... I think that would be Ovaltine.:rolleyes::p
Hap, I know Bill Zielinski, and know of the work that he and many others (myself included) have done in California on mesocarnivore inventory and monitoring. He is one of the top mustelid researchers in North America, if not the world. I would be very, very surprised if there was anything that the either he or the field researcher did with regards to this that is in any way inappropriate. I got the photo through work channels a while ago, and it looks authentic to me. It was taken with a remote camera, a common method for detecting mid-sized carnivores such as marten, fisher, and wolverine.
There has been no hard evidence of a wolverine in California for many years. There are reports of it every year, including sighting reports from reputable people, but none resulted in verified photographs, hair, scat, bodies, or so on. Every sighting report, at least on the forests I have worked in and around, was followed up, and there have been hundreds (if not thousands, by now) of camera traps set up across the state, for a wide variety of reasons. I did a couple dozen sites myself. I suspect that the area surrounding this sighting location will receive some incredible scrutiny for a while.
As to the isolation of the California wolverine, be it 2000 or 10,000 years, that sort of work is normally done with genetic markers, and there are museum specimens from which samples could be taken. From a wolverine habitat standpoint, California is a couple of islands a long way from the nearest known other populations. There has been a lot of genetic work done on fisher in California, for instance, and the genetics of fisher across the northern US is reasonably well known. Wolverine is being similarly studied, and if DNA can be obtained from this animal, I suspect they will be able to determine if it is related to those museum specimens, or it is more closely related to, say, a population in Alaska, which may lead them to believe that someone had it in their posession and let it go in the woods (which at least to me seems more reasonable than it walking down to Tahoe from Alaska). We see that a bit with "wolves" down here in Colorado, that often turn out to be released hybrids people got tired of feeding.
Why did it take so long to find one? In the western US, wolverine tend to like VERY remote, high, nasty terrain, and there is not a lot of that left, especially in California. The effort required to set up monitoring up near treeline is tough, especially in winter when the bears are gone (they really tear up the bait stations), when wilderness locations have to be accessed on foot instead of snowmobile. Even when you are deliberately looking for them, the # of trap nights it takes to get one can be staggering, as they are few and far between down here.
Stay tuned for further information on this and the followup work they are doing on this sighting. I suspect it will be in the papers, but if anyone wants further info on this or other carnivore work the Forest Service does in California or elsewhere, let me know via PM and I will do what I can.
DG
DG
Thank you for the lengthy response and information. I have trapped a number of wolverines and have had a few other encounters with them over the years. They are a different critter, for sure.
art
Hap, sent you a return PM after the PM software ate a page or so twice. Kept logging me out somewhere during the typing. Argh.
I will let folks here know if more info comes down about this. I suspect they are swarming the area with cameras, hair snares, helicopters with FLIR...