A New Fight to Save Wolverines -
Fish and Wildlife Caves to Political Pressure, Center Fights Back
Fierce, cunning and built for survival on unforgiving mountain landscapes, American wolverines are iconic carnivores that can chase away grizzlies — many times their own size. But these feisty furbearers are now caught up in a fight that even they may not walk away from, which is why we’re standing up for them.
Wolverines once roamed a large swath of the mountainous
West. But after decades of trapping and habitat loss, fewer
than 300 of these intriguing animals remain in the lower
48 states, mostly in the northern Rockies — and now they
face a new threat to their survival: global warming, which is
melting the snowpack they need to build dens and raise their
young. Scientists estimate that over the next 75 years, warming temperatures could rob wolverines of 63 percent of their snowy habitat. It’s not hard to imagine what that will do to an animal whose numbers are already precariously low.
Following more than a decade of work by the Center and
allies to protect wolverines, in 2013 U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service scientists finally proposed Endangered Species Act
protections for the species in the lower 48, concluding that
the warming climate is threatening them with extinction. The
proposal won strong support from five of seven scientific peer
reviewers and a nine-person independent science panel. ...
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/earth/newsletter-fall-2014.pdf
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