Jason Kirchner joins us from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Newport, Oregon to dive into one of nature’s most enigmatic creatures: the wolverine. As the District Wildlife Biologist, he answers questions like: What are wolverines? What do they look like? How do they behave? Where do they reside? Separating fact from fiction, we will reveal whether they truly are an intense fictional-feeling species or if they are just as friendly as your pet dog.
Transcript
This is the connection. A duty free hub podcast connecting gravel cyclists to where they ride through short stories about culture, history, people, places in lands.
Dirty Freehub
It’s Kira Corbett from Dirty Free Hub. And today I’m excited to talk with our guest Jason Kirchner about a unique predator, The Wolverine. Crichton joins us from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Newport, Oregon. As a district wildlife biologist, he shares about these interesting species, what they look like and how they behave, where they usually reside, a bit about their ferocious reputation and some additional fun facts. Thanks for joining us today, Jason. Yeah, thanks for the invite. So let’s talk about a little bit. What are wolverines? What do they look like? How do they behave? What do they eat?
Jason Kirchner
Yeah, you bet. The Wolverine is the largest terrestrial member of the Stellar Day family, with females weighing 18 to £27 and males weighing 26 to £45. These are bear like with stallions are are strong lambs with dark brown fur and broad yellowish stripes extending from their shoulders to their rumps.
They’re they’re stocky with short, rounded ears, small eyes, bushy tail and large feet with non retractable claws. Their large feet are sharp and sharp claws are useful for when they’re traversing snow covered fields and things like that. And high in the mountains.
They’re a powerful and fearless mammal, always on a search for food and patrolling their territories. They’re opportunistic feeders, meaning they’ll eat anything they can find. They’re very good scavengers as well. So they’re mostly they’re always on the move, looking for something to eat. Things that they eat are typically like deer, elk, moose roots, berries, larvae and small mammals. And they have a really good sense of smell. They can locate things that are dead or buried, like multiple feet underneath the snow. Cheese. Well, yeah, they’ve they’ve also been observed, like when a cougar or bear or a wolf has a kill, they’ll come in and try to scare those animals off of the kill to get get the meat.
Dirty Freehub
So that’s an interesting you know, they kind of remind me of the the small breed dog, like the toxin. That’s kind of what I am picturing I used to have one. They have a very similar behavior, like the big paws, like they’re kind of not aggressive or kind of territorial slurs, certain people or certain things. And mine would do anything like jump off a cliff to eat food
Jason Kirchner
exactly. Yes. That’s how these are two. They’re just they’re very tough.
Dirty Freehub
Where does they usually reside? Is it mostly the Oregon coast?
Jason Kirchner
No, they’re here on the coast. They’re not really supposed to be here.
Dirty Freehub
Oh, really?
Jason Kirchner
They’re like, dispersing or moving from one mountain range to another. Their primary habitat is like in the alpine tundra, highly mountainous areas above the treeline or, like, right in the at the treeline in the forest. So, like in Oregon, the ideal habitat would be in the cascade Mountains or in the lower mountains where we’ve got some higher elevation areas.
Dirty Freehub
Now, are they still in those locations today or is that just mostly where you would expect them?
Jason Kirchner
In Oregon, yeah. There is one. There’s a research group that has been doing some trail cam monitoring in the wild hours. And occasionally they’re catching this mail that comes probably from the Rocky Mountain area. It comes into the willows occasionally, like maybe once a year. And they get some a brief glimpse of him. But no other Wolverines have been seen. So we don’t have an established, established population in Oregon. They’re just kind of dispersing into the area and looking for suitable habitat right now. Yeah.
Dirty Freehub
So does that make them a rare or endangered species around here or in general?
Jason Kirchner
Yes, they are listed as threatened in Oregon.
Dirty Freehub
Okay. Are they pretty commonly seen like, at least, you know, like in some places around here, if you know the spots to look like, you can commonly see some critters like a beaver or, you know, animals like that. Are they commonly seen or. No.
Jason Kirchner
No, they’re not. They’re not seen very often now. Very rare. Now, they do sound like like kind of an intense species.
Dirty Freehub
Are they actually as mean or like an intense of a personality or are they a friendly species?
Jason Kirchner
Yeah, they they do have a very intense personality. They’re very fierce. They they cover quite a large home range where they live. And so they’ve got to cover the ground and look for food. And they live in areas with a low amount of food. And so they’ve got to be tough. They’re they’re small size. but they kind of act like a polar bear. You know, they’re just they’re very tough. And when they have to get some food, they’re going to fight for it and be aggressive to get it. this whole. I’m a solid family, you know, like otters and weasels. They’re all. They’re all like that really aggressive to survive. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it’s hard to think about that, like with species, like otters because they seem so friendly. But know how you bring them up. Yeah. Very territorial.
Dirty Freehub
Do you have any particular fun facts about Wolverines?
Yes. So one interesting fact is that Wolverines will bury their food in snow. So like keep a cool cow, in essence, refrigerate it and store it for later, Since it’s kind of a boom and bust for food resources, they’ll they’ll bury it in the snow and come back later and feed on it. So that is a very interesting. Yeah.
Dirty Freehub
Is there also anything else that you’d want to share or anything you didn’t ask about regarding them?
Jason Kirchner
Yeah. So lately we’ve been seeing we’ve been getting a lot of sightings of Wolverine moving through the coast and then going into the Willamette Valley. And what we suspect is happening is there’s a population in Washington and it’s probably about, I think they estimated less than 25 individuals in Washington. But there is some reproduction going on. And so we feel that there’s potential for some juvenile Wolverines that are dispersing into Oregon. And luckily here in Newport, we had a sighting and we got a couple hair samples and then it moved down into Florence and we got a really good hair clump on a fence down there. So we got some samples for some DNA, and then it moved to Eugene and we got some scat samples there. So we’re going to send this DNA information to a lab in Montana and they’re going to analyze it to see how it compares to other Wolverines from other research studies in different states to see if if this was one individual moving into Oregon or if it came from the Rocky Mountains, it came from Washington. So it’ll be interesting to see. They’re always on the move. Yeah. Yeah. And recently it’s been in the Willamette Valley near Lebanon and Corvallis area over there.
Dirty Freehub
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time today.
Jason Kirchner
You bet. Thank you for having me. Discuss Wolverines
