Federal Move To Protect Wolverines Baffles Some State Officials

Some state officials are voicing opinions against a pending U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to list the wolverine as a threatened species across the lower 48 states.

The move to further protect the wolverine, a ferocious member of the weasel family sometimes referred to as a "mountain devil," comes from reports that climate change threatens to melt the creatures' snowy habitat in the Rocky Mountains.

But according to an Associated Press report, officials in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming insist that federal protection is not necessary for wolverines, which number an estimated 250-300 in the American West.

Wyoming Governor Matt Mead doesn't think the creatures will be affected by climate change, voicing his opinion in a letter to federal officials.

"There is no evidence suggesting that wolverines will not adapt sufficiently to diminished late spring snow pack (assuming there is any) to maintain viability," he wrote, according to the AP.

Deep mountain snows are vital to wolverines, which they burrow in it to make dens to raise young. Wolverine populations have rebounded from near-extinction due to unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns in the 1930s which nearly wiped out the creatures in the U.S.

Despite the growing population, changes in climate have some concerned that the wolverines won't be able to survive if the snowfields where they live were to melt.

"You have a population that is expanding even as it's at risk. That looks strange to a lot of people," Shawn Sartorius, lead wolverine biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said to the AP. "But what people miss is listing (a species as threatened or endangered) is about projecting threats in the future."

Officials in Montana and Idaho have questioned whether there is truly an imminent threat to wolverines, noting that if climate change were to be a threat, it would be a global one, and regulation would provide little help to the wolverine.

"We just question whether the Endangered Species Act is the proper mechanism through which we can regulate climate change," said Sam Eaton, legal counsel for Idaho's Office of Species Conservation.