A male wolverine nicknamed Van is pictured at one of the Cascades Carnivore Project’s monitoring stations in a photograph the research group shared online this week. “This guy inhabits a huge territory across the South Cascades that is centered in Mount Rainier National Park,” the project wrote. “We have detected him at many stations across the region over a five-year period. He is the resident male of Mount Rainier.” The project announced earlier this year that wolverines had reproduced at Mount Rainier National Park for a third year in a row. Wolverines are native to Washington’s Cascade Range but are believed to have been extirpated by the 1920s, most likely due to unregulated trapping, shooting and poisoning associated with predator control efforts, said Mount Rainier National Park in the release. Individual wolverines moved south out of Canada to recolonize the North Cascades. Surveys by a collaborative group of researchers for more than 20 years have documented wolverines reoccupying their former habitat throughout the Cascades. To learn more about Cascades Carnivore Project and their opportunities for community scientists to participate in carnivore conservation throughout the Cascade Range in the field and from home, go online to www.cascadescarnivore.org.
