Biodiversity Boreal Conservation planning Natural resource development Wolverines

Wolverines and wilderness: A review of wolverine response to human disturbance

Scrafford, M., Copeland, J., McCaw, L., Sawaya, M. & Boyce, M.

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Key points

Wolverines rely on wilderness areas because these places protect them from human-caused harm. As human activity expands into wolverine habitat, it's important to understand whether wolverines can survive in these areas.

The impact of human activity varies. Non-lethal disturbances (like roads or recreation) are most harmful when they happen a lot, but may be tolerable at lower levels if direct killing (like trapping) is controlled.We can promote coexistence by:

• Reducing incidental harvest (unintentional trapping or killing) and industrial attractants
• Creating safe spaces for wolverines through access control, better land-use planning, caribou habitat strategies, and informal no-harvest zones.
• Conducting more research to better understand the long-term effects of non-lethal human disturbances, how different human activities combine to affect wolverines, and the broader-scale effects of fur harvest on population trends.

Abstract

Wolverines (Gulo gulo) are associated with wilderness areas with minimal human-caused habitat degradation and mortality. However, their future is uncertain, as an increasing portion of their range that was de facto wilderness now overlaps with industrial development, recreation, and fur harvest. We reviewed the North American wolverine literature, with insights from Fennoscandian literature, to determine the relative effects of non-lethal and lethal human disturbances on wolverines and whether populations in non-wilderness habitats can be viable. Wolverines occupy home ranges that partly or completely overlap areas with industrial development and recreation. There are positive non-lethal effects, including wolverine use of industrial infrastructure for cover, movement, reproductive den sites, or forage. Nonetheless, much of the evidence suggests that wolverines do not use areas with industrial developments and recreation, with occlusion stronger as the magnitude of human activity increases. Non-lethal disturbances also might have negative effects on reproduction and competition. There appears to be an association between population decline and non-lethal human disturbance, although it can be difficult to disentangle from lethal human disturbances that often occur in the same area. In landscapes with human disturbances, most deaths are associated with fur harvest facilitated by road access, while vehicle collision, nuisance control, and predation occur to a lesser extent. We found a relatively clear link between population decline and lethal human disturbances at local and intermediate scales, particularly in fragmented habitats in the southern mountains, although we are uncertain on how this relationship translates to broader scales. We suggest the viability of wolverines in non-wilderness habitats will vary based on the type and magnitude of human disturbance, with populations potentially capable of overlapping with low-intensity non-lethal human disturbances if mortality is controlled. Wolverine conservation should focus on the creation of refugia, but we propose numerous methods to achieve this outside of creating protected areas that include land-use planning, caribou habitat management, reduced incidental harvest, and management of industrial attractants. Lastly, our review highlights the need for monitoring and enhanced research aligned with knowledge gaps in wolverine ecology that we identified.

Recommended citation

Scrafford, M., Copeland, J., McCaw, L., Sawaya, M. & Boyce, M. (2025). Wolverines and wilderness: A review of wolverine response to human disturbance. Environmental Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1139/er-2024-0125