The land of wolverines lies in the frozen frontier of the North Cascades where nothing seemingly stirs but a foreboding silence slicing through a straitened valley thousands of feet above the lowlands.
This edge-of-the-world expanse of creamy white pinnacles is where a band of Methow Valley ski touring specialists searches for a snow-adapted carnivore clinging to life far from the human interface.
David Moskowitz, Stephanie Williams, Cal Waichler and Drew Lovell are as scrappy as the threatened species they shadow with a low-budget, grassroots scientific research venture they call the Cascades Wolverine Project.
Since 2018, the alpine guides, avalanche forecasters and part-time scientists have entered a bleak and barren landscape to collect data they hope will inform policy decisions about how best to promote wolverine recovery in Washington state. While grizzly bears and gray wolves have become synonymous with Pacific Northwest wildlife conservation, wolverines are difficult to study in the wild.
Scientists are only just beginning to put together an accurate picture of this marvelous creature by combining research methods such as radio-tracking, remote camera surveys, live traps and DNA traps.
Project co-founders Moskowitz and Williams have brought attention to the largest member of the weasel family through visual storytelling. They create a sympathetic narrative for a mammal that depends on deep spring snowpack levels for survival.
The crew will hold its annual educational event from 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25 at Aslan Depot in Bellingham.
“It is an important place for us to visit and connect with people,” said Waichler, the group’s project coordinator. “We’re hoping to connect with a slice of the Bellingham community around recreation and wildlife.”
The event at the Union Depot Building is for anyone 21 years or older. Instead of hosting a fancy fundraiser, the group holds annual events across Washington to teach the public about its work.
The project members are scheduled to attend the event featuring their popular mini-documentary, “Finding Gulo.” The group will answer questions after the film.
The outreach is a way to recruit community scientists to help in the backcountry.
Their work over seven years has inspired recreationalists to file observation reports, which helps to expand the project database.
Moskowitz said the group has collected a quarter-million images, including 1,833 photos of wolverines, from 10,000 sampling days.
I joined Moskowitz and Waichler last March on a monitoring trip on the snowy Cascadian ridges above Lake Chelan.
Moskowitz told me that public involvement is vital to advancing wolverine restoration. Folks collecting data tend to appreciate policy decisions about land management that affect them because they actively participate in the process.
Most people never see a wolverine so the reliability of data can be circumspect. The group vets each reported sighting. It has an identification guide on its website for public education.
How to identify them
The basics: Wolverines have five toes, whereas lynx and wolves have four appendages. Wolverines also have sharp, semi-retractable claws that efficiently dig into snow.
I spend more time looking at the trail for tracks since following Moskowitz and Waichler through deep snow to their wildlife cameras. Finding evidence of a wolverine would exponentially add to the mountain experience.
The wolverine experts have another reason to trek across State Route 20 to Bellingham. They built a western monitoring station along Ptarmigan Ridge above Artist Point.
It is one of 20 stations scattered across the North Cascades. Most of them are located in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest near their homes in the Methow Valley.
The man who used to handle the station in the Mount Baker Wilderness has moved out of the area. Waichler said they plan to collect data from the remote trail cameras.
Moskowitz, Waichler and Williams usually spend 20 days each during the winter trekking to monitoring sites to collect data and check on the trail cams.
They leave attractants — a deer leg or a stinky trapper’s concoction of skunk, castor and muskrat — to lure wolverines to their cameras.
Sometimes known as skunk bears, wolverines scavenge for deer, elk and mountain goats. They are considered one the fiercest carnivores in North America and have been known to chase grizzly bears away from a kill site.
The 40-pound mammal is not a threat to humans but also is good at keeping its distance. It’s one reason the Cascades Wolverine Project needs assistance in its count.
The wolverine population was decimated in the early 1900s by fur trapping and poison baiting that targeted wolves and other carnivores.
Only 40 estimated in Washington state
Williams estimates about 40 wolverines live in Washington state, which represents the southernmost extent of viable habitat for an animal that thrives in high elevations.
About 300 animals remain in the contiguous United States, with the largest concentration in northern Idaho and Montana.
This begs the question about the Michigan Wolverines, the defending college football champions. “I was born in Michigan, but there are no wolverines in Michigan,” Williams once told me.
Historians do not have a definitive explanation for the association. One theory purports the nickname is the product of the 1835 Toledo War between Michigan and Ohio. Supposedly, Ohioans called their adversaries “wolverines” for being ornery.
The wolverines living in the contiguous United States now face the threat of shrinking spring snow cover where females build dens to reproduce.
Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated wolverines in the lower 48 states as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The action helped emphasize the importance of charting the North Cascades population. It is illegal to kill, injure or harass a wolverine, with exceptions for accidental trapping under the rule policy.
“They’re emblematic of real wild places that are disappearing,” said wolverine authority Matthew Scrafford from the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
With a group effort like the Cascades Wolverine Project, we just might keep them on the landscape.
Elliott Almond's outdoor column appears monthly. Email: elliottalmond4@gmail.com.
