Storm after storm the North Cascades continue to fatten up this winter with upwards of fifteen feet of snow on the ground. In the alpine, spring feels further away than the calendar would suggest. By now, on the first day of March, we imagine a mother wolverine out there somewhere in the mountains with a couple of newly born kits, snug and protected deep in their snow den.
This winter, with the help of a small crew of skilled volunteers, we currently have ten monitoring stations up and running, and a handful of wolverine detections thus far. Also, public wildlife observations continue to trickle in despite this winter’s abundant snowfall and wind (thank you, La Niña!) that regularly cover and erase wildlife tracks from the snow surface.
Back in early January, project co-founder David Moskowitz gave a well-attended virtual presentation on the project, hosted by our friends at The Methow Conservancy. If you missed it, there’s a recording available here. Also, in early February, the Holden Village Podcast interviewed team CWP while we were basing out of the village for field work in both wolverine monitoring and snowpack observations: check it out here. A longer interview from 2020 is here.
Finally, we are very excited about the most recent addition to CWP’s art + science collection from artist Hannah Viano. Hannah is currently designing field identification content, with support from Anne and Jon Fox, in memory of Methow naturalist Mary Kiesau. The art at the top of this email is a sneak peak for you guys of some of her new work, inspired by a Holden Village wolverine detected several times by remote camera.
Our grassroots effort to support wolverine recovery really is not possible without volunteers and financial support from numerous supporters. We are delighted to announce that the project’s fundraising goal for this winter was exceeded with well over $15,000 in donations from individuals! Thank you from the top of the mountain and the bottom of our hearts.
Sincerely,
Dave, Drew, and Steph
News from the field this winter
Thanks to numerous community scientists who sent us reports of tracks last winter in a particular area we were able to identify a new camera monitoring installation for this winter. Set up and monitored by project volunteer Nick March and others, we have just gotten our first detection on a camera trap west of the crest.
Thanks for the great work Nick and everyone that sent us track reports from the Mount Baker area last year!
Check out this short time-lapse video of a North Cascades wolverine playing with one of our camera traps. A Clark’s nutcracker and a marten had posed for several thousand photos before the wolverine showed up so this camera wasn’t working at the time the wolverine decided to get up close and personal with it! Note that it appears neither the camera nor the wolverine sustained any injuries from the encounter…though it did take about an hour of maintenance to get the camera up and running again on our last field check!