Wolverines Back in California

Two new photographs of a wolverine were taken in March after a remote camera captured the first shot of the elusive beast in 80 years in the Tahoe National Forest on Feb. 28, 2008.

Searching an area of over 150 square miles, graduate student Katie Moriarty of Oregon State University coordinated a team of volunteers, experts and members of the Forest Service and California Department of Fish and Game in the search for the ferocious creature previously thought to be absent in California. Aside from the cameras, the team also used hair snares, ground searches for wolverine tracks, overhead flights to detect possible radio telemetry signals from wolverines previously fitted with radio transmitters in studies in Montana. They even used dogs trained to identify wolverine scat.

Pacific Southwest Research Station scientists helped to develop many of the detection methods biologists are now using to collect more wolverine evidence. They also managed the study that inadvertently led to the photograph of a wolverine in February, which provided the first scientific confirmation of the animal in California since the 1920s.

"Forest Service scientists at the Pacific Southwest Research Station are very excited about these confirmed detections of a wolverine in the Sierra Nevada Mountains," said Beth Pendleton, acting director of the station and its eight labs in California and Hawaii. "Station scientists will continue to work with the Tahoe National Forest and California Department of Fish and Game to gather and share information on this rare carnivore."

-- Justin Jernigan

Credit: USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and Oregon State University

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