BILLINGS, Mont. — The North American wolverine will receive long-delayed threatened species protections under a Biden administration proposal released Wednesday in response to scientists’ warnings that climate change will likely melt away the rare species’ snowy mountain refuges and push them toward extinction.
Across most of the U.S., wolverines were wiped out by the early 1900s from unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns. About 300 surviving animals in the contiguous U.S. live in fragmented, isolated groups at high elevations in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Wolverines join a growing number of animals, plants and insects — from polar bears in Alaska to crocodiles in southern Florida — that officials say are at growing risk as increasing temperatures bake the planet, altering snowfall patterns and raising sea levels.
In the coming decades, warming temperatures are expected to shrink the mountain snowpack wolverines rely on to dig dens where they birth and raise their young.
The decision Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service follows more than two decades of disputes over the risks of climate change, and threats to the long-term survival of the elusive species. Officials wrote in the proposal that protections under the Endangered Species Act were needed “due primarily to the ongoing and increasing impacts of climate change and associated habitat degradation and fragmentation.”
The animals resemble small bears and are the world’s largest species of terrestrial weasels. Sometimes called “mountain devils,” they thrive in harsh alpine environments.
Protections were rejected under former President Donald Trump. A federal judge in 2022 ordered the administration of President Joe Biden to make a final decision this week on whether to seek protections.
Protecting the wolverines’ remaining habitat strongholds gives the animals a fighting chance, said former U.S. Forest Service research biologist Jeffrey Copeland.
Listing wolverines as threatened “means that we have not paid enough attention to this critter to give it what it needs,” he said.
“It’s a failure. But in this type of situation, it’s the only tool that we have.”
Republican lawmakers in Montana had urged the administration to delay its decision, claiming the scientists’ estimates were too inaccurate to make a fair call about the dangers faced by wolverines. The lawmakers, led by hard-right conservative Rep. Matt Rosendale, warned that protections could lead to future restrictions on activities allowed in wolverine habitats, including snowmobiling and skiing.
Rosendale said Wednesday that he would seek to revoke threatened species status for wolverines at the earliest chance if it’s finalized.
“Whether it’s private property, state property or federal property, if we are limited on the use of that land based upon this status, that’s a taking,” he said. “Is the federal government going to compensate the state for lack of use on state-owned lands? …. I don’t think so.”
In September, government scientists conceded some uncertainty about how quickly mountain snowpacks could disappear every spring in areas with wolverines. They also said habitat loss due to climate change — combined with other problems such as increased development including houses and roads — will likely harm wolverine populations.