The Extreme Sport of Wolverine Research
Between a contentious endangered species listing and an impending restoration effort in Colorado, demand for reliable wolverine data is soaring. How far do biologists go to capture it?
Author: Katie Hill
“Would it even be a work trip if someone didn’t almost die?”
Rebecca Watters laughs when she drops this casual turn-of-phrase. The joke she once shared with a colleague is meant to be satirical in its severity. But she’s only half-kidding.
The other half of her, the half that recalls dehydration-induced hallucinations deep in the backcountry, cliffing out countless times along the Rocky Mountain Front, getting stalked by a human-conditioned black bear, and traveling hundreds of miles on skis in a single month is completely serious. That half sobers the conversation, but only slightly; Watters really loves what she does.
She’s not a professional skier. She’s not a wilderness first responder, either. She doesn’t guide sheep hunts, goat hunts, or elk hunts. She doesn’t get paid to climb Half Dome wearing any particular brand or logo. She’s not in the military, or the Forest Service, or the Peace Corps — at least, not anymore.
Watters is a wolverine biologist. (More accurately, she’s a recovering one, as she’s currently taking a break to do advocacy work.) From the early 2000s through the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she had one of the hardest jobs in the outdoors: finding a sneaky, ornery, territorial needle in a haystack the size of the Mountain West.
For much of that time, the general public ignored wolverines. Ask strangers what they thought of the species, and they were more likely to say something about Hugh Jackman’s $415-million box office hit than the smarmy mustelid.
But that was part of the draw for Watters. She began her carnivore biology career by researching how the public perceived wolves in Colorado. Even two decades ago, the topic was fraught with anger and hostility, and Watters’ job as a proverbial punching bag left her emotionally bruised and exhausted. Eventually, she realized she needed to study a species no one cared about.
Wolverines were perfect. They were small enough to be unthreatening, scarce enough to avoid the spotlight, and charismatic enough to generate some lingering sense among the public that they were really cool. Beyond those characteristics, people didn’t pay much attention to them.
That’s not the case anymore. In November 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service classified wolverines as federally threatened. Then, on May 20th, the Colorado legislature passed Senate Bill 24-171, paving the way for a wolverine reintroduction in the Centennial State. With every passing day, the recreating public ventures higher into the alpine and deeper into the backcountry, bringing smartphone cameras and GoPros with them. Add shrinking snowpack to the mix and suddenly, wolverines have started to roast under the hot glow of national attention. Amid all of it, their population grows at a glacial pace as they recover from near-extirpation throughout the Lower 48 in the 20th century.
Those are a lot of extenuating circumstances for one species to endure. But it’s also proof of how necessary the work of wolverine biologists is. Without updated data, state and federal wildlife agencies would rely on old figures to make decisions. So, people like Watters surge deep into the backcountry and soar above the alpine to find answers — often risking life and limb.
From Wolves to Wolverines
Watters knew something was wrong with her wolf research work when she realized most of her conversations with rural Coloradans were reminiscent of other conversations she had as an overseas Peace Corps volunteer with survivors of torture and genocide.
“I very quickly realized I didn’t want to be back in that kind of situation,” she says. “The executive director of the organization hosting my wolf research for the summer also worked as the field coordinator for the Absaroka-Beartooth Wolverine Project. One day, I said I was really tired of all the conflict, and that I wished I could find a species that lives up in the mountains that no one knows or cares about. He was like ‘Well, do I have a species for you.’”
Watters ended up following the executive director, a man named Jason Wilmot, on a trip up the Continental Divide to gather data from collared wolverines. Wilmot had broken some ribs on a snowmobile the last time he went to this location alone, and he needed a partner. The person who was supposed to go with him bailed at the last minute. He asked Watters to join instead.
“He told me we would go up on the Continental Divide, and that it was a really steep approach but it would be pretty flat once we got to the top,” Watters says. “We were going to cover 42 miles in two days. I was like sure, that’s fine, whatever. I was inexperienced enough and so much not a backcountry mountain athlete that the trip distance and time sounded reasonable. I definitely didn’t know what I was getting myself into until I was in the middle of it.”
She shouldered a pack laden with research equipment and camping gear and went along. At 6 feet 3 inches tall, Wilmot covered much more ground in fewer steps than Watters could muster. But she insisted on keeping up.
“I ended up getting really, really dehydrated and violently ill. That was my first introduction to wolverine research,” she recalls. “But the first night out there, a wolverine actually came into our camp. At that moment, despite all the physical pain and momentary panic that we’d have to call a helicopter because I could barely move, I was thoroughly hooked.”
A Species at Risk
Wolverines are native to arctic and subarctic regions of Asia, Europe, and North America. But unregulated hunting, trapping, and even poisoning wiped them from the contiguous U.S. in the early 20th century.
Like many species, the conservation status of wolverines has long been cause for disagreement between various pockets of stakeholders — namely trappers, environmental advocacy groups, and government agencies. The Predator Project and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation filed the first of many petitions for an Endangered Species Act listing in 1994. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied that petition and the others that followed.
Wolverines were a trappable species in Montana until 2012, at which point Helena District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock blocked the season opener due to concerns over the species being potentially endangered. A regional population of wolverines lived near Glacier National Park, but there was contention over how big that population was.
That’s because there’s a huge element of data scarcity to wolverine research, Cascades Carnivore Project founder and executive director Jocelyn Akins points out. This isn’t an animal that collects in herds out in the open, ripe for spotting from an aerial survey with decent optical equipment. This is an animal that lives alone in the scraggly alpine, is hardly bigger than an average 6-year-old kid, and has long avoided human contact at all costs. Reliable answers are incredibly hard to come by.
“[FWS] declined to list the wolverine as threatened or endangered due to a lack of data,” Akins says. “Wolverine researchers before my time decided they needed to do more, because there was so little known about this species. You really have to go above and beyond if you want to put the pieces together. It takes forever.”
In 2013, FWS proposed to list wolverines as a threatened species again. But after an independent review of the proposal, the agency reneged in 2014. Then, in 2016, the U.S. District Court of Montana vacated that decision and held that wolverines needed to be reconsidered for listing. Another proposal was denied in 2020. This back-and-forth continued until the species was classified as threatened in November 2023 — which happened in large part because wolverine habitat was shrinking, rather than wolverine numbers.
“Current and increasing impacts of climate change and associated habitat degradation and fragmentation are imperiling the North American wolverine,” FWS Pacific regional director Hugh Morrison said in a press release. “Based on the best available science, this listing determination will help to stem the long-term impact and enhance the viability of wolverines in the contiguous United States.”
Watters told The Westrn that other factors compound the habitat degradation issue caused by climate change. Unsurprisingly, most of them are human-caused.
“Studies have shown that both motorized and non-motorized recreation in the backcountry change wolverine behavior, so that is definitely a concern,” she says. “Shrinking snowpack is going to concentrate wolverines and skiers and other snowsports people into the same habitat, and that habitat is going to be reduced in size. There’s a whole tangle of things that need to be resolved.”
It’s a familiar trope for outdoorspeople in the West: more bodies, less space. But wolverines live in many other parts of the world — places less burdened by crowded public lands and bureaucratic drama. Some of Watters’ greatest challenges as a wolverine biologist didn’t happen stateside.
Months and Miles in Mongolia
One of the multitude of benefits that wolverine research offered Watters was a return to a landscape she had already fallen in love with. She worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia years prior, and an under-studied population of wolverines lived in the northern part of the country. That population was her ticket back.
But to conduct wildlife research in a more rural, remote place like northern Mongolia came with a unique set of challenges that Watters had yet to face as a biologist in the U.S. The researchers worked without electricity for most of their time in the field, and there were no roads. There was also a glaring absence of wildlife veterinarians for her to work with. This meant that the arduous process of tranquilizing wolverines to apply GPS collars—a widely regarded method of wildlife data capture in the U.S.—was a non-starter.
“I just didn’t want to take that risk,” Watters says. “We were just using tracking, DNA collection, and camera traps.”
To get around the snowy, 9,000-foot mountain passes that Mongolia’s wolverines called home, Watters and her crew traveled on skis. They would try to capture genetic material from wolverine tracks, which first required finding those tracks and then following them. On one expedition, they covered 270 miles. On another, they covered 350.
“We would ski for a solid month each time. We were resupplied, but at any one time we were carrying 10 days worth of supplies. It was hard,” she recalls. “That was the most physically rigorous time in my career. I mean, it’s always physically rigorous. But that was the toughest thing I’ve ever done.”
This experience put her on the radar of the Wolverine Foundation in Bozeman, Montana. They invited her to become the executive director in 2016. As a leader, she connected with other wolverine researchers from different parts of the species’ range. One of those biologists was Jocelyn Akins.
While Watters worked her way into the Rocky Mountain wolverine research scene, Akins similarly transitioned away from researching a high-profile carnivore to researching wolverines in the Pacific Northwest. She started as a grizzly bear biologist in the Canadian Rockies and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, but she got into wolverine research in the GYE during the winters when all the grizzlies were hibernating. Then, in 2006, biologists with the Yakama Nation of northern Washington captured a photo of a male wolverine on Mount Adams, close to where she grew up.
“I was totally inspired by that detection,” Akins says. “I quickly realized that, if someone could just get out into the remotest reaches of the Cascades and go do these things I’ve learned how to do — set a camera trap, get DNA samples — then we could contribute a fair bit to understanding of how this species is doing. I approached the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and asked if I could start a wolverine project. They were like ‘Sure, here’s $500.’”
That was in 2008. Sixteen years later the Cascades Carnivore Project has turned into a small non-profit that also studies the Cascade red fox and the Canada lynx. Like Watters, Akins is also happy to focus on a species that lacks the human baggage of larger carnivores.
“It’s not easy,” Akins says. “I’m friends with some wolf researchers and folks working on the grizzly reintroduction in Cascades National Park. It’s super political. As a scientist and a researcher, that’s really not what you’re trying for.”
Snowmobile Crashes and Beaver Carcasses
The lack of sociological challenges associated with wolverine research in the Cascades is tempered by immense physical challenges. To reach wolverine habitat, Akins and her team snowmobile as far back as they can get, until they hit motorized vehicle restriction boundaries. Then, they strap on backcountry skis or snowshoes and travel the rest of the way on foot. Usually, they’re going up to the treeline at around 6,000 feet of elevation, where most of a wolverine’s feeding activity happens. Back when Akins had just started her Cascades research, she did this trek six days a week.
“I borrowed a 1996 Yamaha Phazer piece-of-crap snowmobile,” she recalls. “I used to go out with this terribly underpowered snowmobile and get stuck all the time. I remember one day I accidentally drove into a tree well, and the skis were on either side of the tree. I couldn’t pull it back or sideways to turn it around, so I had to dig it out for hours and hours.”
Another time, she tipped a bigger sled on its side facing downhill.
“I was like ‘Well, I can’t even get this thing upright. But I have to,’” she recalls. “I was begging my muscles to be strong enough. Then I had to snowmobile another hour and a half, then I had to ski, then I had to climb a tree in ski boots to set these camera traps. In the early days, I just climbed up the trees, but then I slowly got the right gear to do that more safely.”
On these long excursions, Akins often carries light camping gear and safety equipment, plus construction supplies to build wolverine camera traps — bait included.
“I’m about to go to Italy to go backpacking for a month, and my pack is so light,” Akins says, laughing. “When I’m working, I have to bring 24 batteries, five tree-climbing steps, a few extra cameras, and spare locks for the cameras. Oh and also, a wrench, a Leatherman knife, a six-foot section of two-by-four, and then, a frozen beaver. Last summer, I had six cow femurs with me.”
Akins describes the standard camera trap setup as similar to a plank on a pirate ship. She strings a cable between two trees roughly 20 feet above the ground to suspend the bait. Below the bait, she secures a five-inch section of natural wood and a few pieces of two-by-four to a tree trunk. This contraption acts as a plank with uprights for a wolverine to pull itself up on. When the wolverine stands on the plank and reaches toward the bait, it exposes a unique chest patch to a nearby camera. This patch, like a fingerprint, differentiates individual wolverines from each other.
With every camera trap sighting, Akins and her colleagues slowly chip away at the fortress of question marks surrounding wolverines in the Lower 48. Every unique chest patch unlocks a little more intel on the species’ current state — and its future outlook. The responsibility outweighs their bulging backpacks.
“You need to be strong and have some mountain skills,” Akins says. “You need to be comfortable continuing forward in somewhat risky conditions. Avalanche danger is a really big part of the risk on most days. But you need to be able to travel through it. If you’re a backcountry skier, you don’t just turn around. You take a look and dig a snow pit, and if it’s safe, you proceed. If we didn’t proceed, we wouldn’t get anything done.”
What’s Next for Wolverines
Colorado hasn’t had a breeding population of wolverines since the dawn of the 20th century. Despite the recent increase in attention paid to the species, the thought of a reintroduction has circulated the Colorado Parks and Wildlife for some time, CPW deputy terrestrial section manager on species conservation David Klute tells The Westrn.
“We now have the statutory authority and necessary resources in place to move forward on reintroducing this species,” he writes in an email statement. “[We are] just beginning to plan logistics. Because of [the wolverine’s] high elevation and remote habitat, accessing restoration sites will require significant effort.”
The reintroduction necessitates ample technology and man hours. GPS collars allow for remote monitoring, Klute points out. But nothing beats direct access to habitat.
“Updated data will be critical to the reintroduction effort,” he writes. “Gathering information about habitat use, distribution, territory establishment, and other factors will greatly improve our knowledge and our ability to conserve the species … but until we have wolverines in the state we won't know for sure how they will use habitat [here].”
The bill enacting the reintroduction will formally go into effect on August 7th. A total of $102,808 was appropriated from the wildlife cash fund to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources for the 2024-2025 fiscal year for “wildlife operations” associated with the project. But CPW cannot proceed with the reintroduction until the FWS classifies the reintroduced population as “nonessential experimental,” the bill’s language says.
This means USFWS must rule that reintroduced wolverines will fall under the 10(j) rule of the Endangered Species Act, which allows for more flexibility in how reintroduced threatened and endangered species are managed, Klute says. CPW officials and livestock owners will have more tools to prevent human-wildlife conflict and livestock loss than if the reintroduced wolverines weren’t given a 10(j) classification. In other words, when trying to haze a wolverine away from livestock or humans, methods of harassment and deterrence — including lethal force — otherwise prohibited for ESA-listed species are fair game.
The legislation also says that CPW “must adopt rules for the compensation of owners of livestock for losses caused by the North American wolverine.” But wolverines have only predated on livestock in extremely limited instances. One 4-year-old male in Utah, for example, injured and killed 18 sheep in March 2022.
This brings researchers like Watters and Akins back to familiar and unpleasant territory: controversy and conflict between a particular carnivore species and the humans impacted by its presence on a landscape. This doesn’t seem to bother Akins much. She says she’ll study wolverines for the remainder of her career. Her work with the Cascades Carnivore Project continues to thrill her, and she loves the wild places she gets to scramble around on a near-daily basis.
Watters can’t help but cringe at the thought of the work that was once her salvation becoming another source of angst. Like any aging wolverine, she’s a little smarter now than she was two decades ago, and she can smell conflict from a distance.
“There isn’t a ton of unreasonable hatred for this species,” Watters says. “But everyone knows about wolverines now. This isn’t the work that it was when I started.”
She’s unsure what the future holds for her research, but if it’s anything like the past, it will require a large dose of tenacity. After all, Watters has made a career out of subconscious resilience, out of obsession with what she and an old research partner used to call “the quest with a capital ‘Q.’” That’s what it takes to wake up every morning and find an animal that doesn’t want to be found.
“You know it’s going to be very hard, and there’s something you enjoy about the impossibility of it,” Watters says. “But I never thought about mental toughness because [not finding wolverines] never registered as failure. You have to have trust that your work is going to matter, even if you don’t get the answer you’re looking for. Not finding them one day is a spur to get up and do it again the next day.”
Camera trap footage courtesy of the Cascades Carnivore Project.
Love this article! I worked on some citizen science wolverine bait stations last winter and taking people out to replace the bait and check camera traps was worth it to get them excited about conservation but it was super hard! Wolverines researchers are a different breed!
Awesome article on a species that very little is know about! As a wildlife professional I would love to one day do some work with wolverines