A rare wolverine has been spotted on the Oregon Coast three times in the past week and a half in Nehalem, Netarts and Newport.
“Wolverines are rare and listed as threatened in Oregon, so these sightings are certainly unusual,” wrote Beth Quillian, a spokesperson with Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. “The Oregon Coast does not provide suitable habitat, and this wolverine is likely dispersing to a new area where it can survive and hopefully reproduce.”
Wolverines are the largest member of the weasel family, weighing somewhere between 17 to 40 pounds, with brown fur and small rounded ears. They typically live in cold, higher elevation areas with a dense snowpack, which they use to both protect their dens and – because they’re scavengers – create a kind of ice chest for prey.
Young wolverines will often travel long distances to establish a new territory, which is what ODFW suspects is the case with these sightings.
“Dispersing animals regularly travel through diverse landscapes while looking for a new home, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to have a wolverine population set up shop anytime soon,” ODFW wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Wolverines can travel more than 30 miles a day, and the three confirmed sightings on the Oregon coast are likely of the same individual animal, Quillian said. This animal is heading south, based on the first sighting in Nehalem on March 10 and the most recent sighting in Newport on March 21.
Wolverines typically live in Canada, Alaska, Wyoming, Washington, Montana and Idaho. Fewer than 1,000 wolverines are believed to still roam the United States.
According to ODFW, the elusive animals were thought to be eradicated from Oregon in 1936, but there have been scattered sightings since in the 1960s.
A monitoring project from 2010 to 2012 confirmed three individual wolverines in northeastern Oregon, an area in the Wallowa Mountains with no prior documentation of wolverines, Quillian said.
In March 2023, a wolverine was spotted near the Columbia River and then in Damascus and Beavercreek. Those were the first confirmed reports of the animal outside the Wallowa Mountains in over 30 years.
ODFW is unsure if this wolverine on the coast is the same animal spotted about a month ago in rural Clackamas County.
People who spot a suspected wolverine are asked to keep their distance from the animal, but snap a photo if possible, and report the sighting to ODFW online via iNaturalist.
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