One thing played to their advantage, he said when pursued, wolverines tended to run uphill. In deep snow that really hampered their speed. Once caught, wolverines were quickly processed.
The collars were programmed to record GPS locations at min intervals, and were capable of maintaining that rate of data collection for about 3 months and then to continue VHF beaconing for about days longer before battery failure. Collars also stored altitude and air temperature. Two types of GPS collars were used; both stored thousands of location data points onboard and allowed remote downloading of collar data from the ground or from the air.
One model could be released remotely to drop-off, the other could not and required recapture to retrieve collars. Golden and Harrington were successful live-trapping on JBER during the first two or three years while new animals were still coming into the trapsites. The researchers took advantage of a winter moose hunting season on the joint base - wolverines were attracted to kill sites and worked the hunt areas into their foraging circuits.
However, it became very difficult to attract wolverines into traps during winter of —13, which they attributed mostly to the lack of new wolverines visiting the area. From images gathered on the remote cameras, it seemed the animals were too wary to be caught. You might fool them once, but how do you fool them again after that? We got creative with different kinds of bait - we tried chickens wrapped in bacon, and big wads of beef suet.
Home range estimates for wolverines in South-central Alaska show females use about to square kilometers square miles and males use about to 1, square kilometers to square miles. Males and females traveled extensively throughout their home use areas. Both sexes occasionally went on exploratory trips and then returned to their primary areas.
A look at the movements of five wolverines over the course of a year two females and three males showed great variation in distances traveled, some days they covered a lot of ground, others days not so much. The average distances traveled per day was about 12 kilometers for the females, and between eight and 21 kilometers for the males. Because the focus of the study was movement in late winter and spring, the researchers did not track wolverines year-round. The far ranging male did provide some data in late spring — when he expanded his range even more.
Wolverines are born in February or March, two to four kits that usually dwindle from mortality to one or two by fall. The kits are essentially full grown by October or November and begin moving out. It can be tough for a young wolverine to find a territory that is unoccupied and suitable.
But wolverines have been known to disperse as far as miles. That balance is a model for sustainable yield — enough refugia from human activity, good habitat for wolverines that are producing young that will emigrate out.
Hunters and trappers in Alaska harvest about wolverines each year. Wolverines disperse depending on availability of food and habitat resources, and animals dispersing from areas where they are not trapped replenish the population in areas where they are hunted and trapped. A gallery of trail camera photos of wolverines is available, as well as a short video of a wolverine raiding the nest of a ground-nesting shorebird and eating the eggs.
Since Oeming had no affinity for wolverines, Kroschel was allowed to step in. There was a time when trappers would catch them instead of shooting them, and there were a few that could be saved for educational purposes.
And that's where it first started. Since then, wolverines have become Kroschel's passion, and he soon realized his uncanny knack for winning their trust. And when they're bonded with you, they will follow you around in the mountains like a dog.
He says the secret to calming wolverines is introducing them to humans when they're first born, and getting them to "imprint on you. And in all these years, I've never been sent to the emergency room. But even with careful training, a wolverine couldn't be trusted to dig someone out of the snow unattended. Much like the weasel, the wolverine is very shy and scarcely seen. They are very clever and resourceful. They are most noted for their aggressiveness and fearlessness.
In soft snow the wolverine usually moves by jumping, which is typical for animals in the weasel family. Miniature games. Can you tame a Wolverine? Can I have a pet penguin?
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