The Lone Wolverine: Tracking Michigan's Most Elusive Animal

February, 2006

February, 2006 ✦ ✦ ✦ Audrey Magoun’s casual mention of wolverine tracks near Chapleau, Ontario, added fresh fuel to a ‹re that had been burning in Jeff’s belly for nearly two years, virtually from the moment he’d ‹rst seen the Thumb wolverine on the evening news. While he scoffed at the notion that wolverines—like cougars—had been living in Michigan undetected all along, he was equally annoyed by the DNR’s dismissal of the wolverine as simply an escaped zoo captive or pet. The previous year, wolverine sightings had been reported near Ancaster , Ontario, east of the Thumb and elsewhere in southern Ontario. Now tracks had been spotted 300 miles north, on or near the Chapleau Crown Game Preserve—a protected wildlife refuge northeast of Lake Superior offering 2,700 square miles of shelter to species as diverse as lynx, timber wolf, moose, otter, and mink. As unlikely as it might be, was it really that unreasonable to think a lone wolverine might have found its way south across the ice? Audrey cautioned him not to make too many leaps of logic: there simply wasn’t enough solid data available to know for certain what was or wasn’t possible when it comes to wolverines. According to a 2004 research paper published in the journal Northwest Science,1 only two ecological studies on wolverines had been completed to date in the lower United States, in northwest Montana and central Idaho. A species widely scattered over rugged, inaccessible terrain was dif‹cult to study; hence, such research was rare. In fact, the insuf ‹ciency of data was one of the main challenges the US Fish and Wildlife Service faced in getting wolverines considered for potential listing as a threatened or endangered species. Random reports notwithstanding, the Great Lakes region was sim122 ply not considered suitable habitat for wolverines: it lacked the yearround cold and persistent spring snow cover believed necessary for their successful reproduction. Combined with the small number of historical records, those facts had led the Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude that wolverines were not and had likely never been full-time Great Lakes residents.2 Still, according to the Northwest Science article, in 2002 a young male wolverine (identi‹ed as M304) equipped with a VHF radio implant and GPS collar had covered a minimum of 543 miles in 42 days across the Wyoming and Idaho wilderness.3 By the time the animal was legally February, 2006 ✦ 123 Map 3. To date there are only two con‹rmed wolverine reports in northern Ontario near the Great Lakes: a male wolverine trapped about 56 miles (90 km) west of Thunder Bay in November, 1996, and a male trapped in January, 2004, about 84 miles (135 km) north of Thunder Bay. Tracks were observed near Chapleau in 2006 about 250 miles (400 km) north of the Thumb. Courtesy of Neil Dawson, Wildlife Assessment Program Leader, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. harvested by a trapper on January 11, 2004, its greatest recorded distance of straight-line travel had been slightly more than 165 miles. The boreal forest—known wolverine habitat—is a worldwide band of subarctic, conifer-dominated forest stretching across more than four billion acres of Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska and northern Canada. Ontario ’s portion of the boreal forest extends from the northern limits of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence forest to the Hudson Bay lowlands, accounting for two-thirds of Ontario’s forestland.4 Chapleau—where bush pilots reported spotting wolverine tracks—lies at the southern gateway to that subarctic region, about 300 miles from the Minden City State Game Area and Jeff Ford’s front door. Jeff knew that Audrey was right to remind him to exercise caution in making assumptions and jumping to conclusions—but he couldn’t help doing the math in his head. Sure, he had no good explanation for why any self-respecting wolverine would be inclined to leave the comforts of the boreal forest to journey hundreds of miles south into relatively inhospitable, humancongested lands that offered little in the way of good climate, adequate habitat, or reproductive potential. He had no hard evidence that such a journey had ever been made. What he did have was a lone, highly improbable wolverine, alive and well and hundreds of miles from where every quali‹ed expert said it should be. Maybe an escaped captive was indeed the likeliest answer. Or maybe...