A wolverine walks across the snow in 2018 near the Toolik Field Station on Alaska’s North Slope. Wolverines are elusive and need a lot of space, so they are hard to count, but a new study gives an updated population and density estimate for the North Slope. (Photo by Peter Mather/Provided by Martin Robards)
Wolverines, wily animals that are the subjects of legend, have a healthy population in Arctic Alaska, but they need a lot of undisturbed habitat for their population to stay that way.
That was shown in a recently published study in the Journal of Wildlife Management, which gave the first estimate of North Slope wolverine numbers and densities in several decades.
The study, by Thomas Glass, a University of Alaska Fairbanks biologist, and Martin Robards, a Fairbank-based biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, tracked animals that were given radio collars after being lured by bait stations. The biologists observed animals through prepositioned cameras.
The combination of radio-dollar and camera data collected from 2017 to 2022 led to a mean estimate of 488 wolverines on the North Slope, with an estimated density of two wolverines per 1,000 square kilometers.