Yellowstone’s known for some of the most breathtaking moments of humans encountering wildlife – spotting herds of bison is an experience most visitors will never forget. The park is home to the “largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states,” says the National Park Service. One of those which rarely shows its face and claws: the wolverine. According to a study conducted in 2006-09, only seven wolverines were documented as living in Yellowstone and adjoining national forests, a territory of well over 3,472 square miles.
Yet just before noon on March 5, a father and daughter traveling with a Yellowstone Insight guide were lucky enough to come across one while driving and halted to observe it. The creature loped back and forth for three minutes until another car’s arrival made it bound up the snowbank and away. The daughter, 9, told the guide MacNeil Lyons it was the “most amazing day ever in her life,” as reported by For the Win. The group originally thought the wolverine was a bear, already an exciting sight, until it looked over its shoulder at them, displaying its distinctive weasel-family silhouette. Lyons posted several photos of the wolverine on his company’s Facebook page, a post which was shared by close to 4,000 readers.
“Wolverines are so rarely seen and inhabit such remote terrain at low densities that assessing population trends is difficult and sudden declines could go unnoticed for years,” reports the page of the National Park Service’s website devoted to the creatures. There has been concern in the past that they should be declared an endangered species, and in 2016 a US District Court reinstated a proposal to list them as a threatened species that the US Fish and Wildlife Service had withdrawn in 2014. Climate change will further decrease the numbers of wolverines since they den and give birth in deep snow.
One challenge in seeing them is that they inhabit high-elevation forests and tundra, and another is their range. According to recent monitoring, female wolverines can range 172 square miles a year, while males can cover 350 square miles – it’s like finding a weasel in a haystack.
