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Marmot/Wolverine

Way up here in the high alpine? You’ve got some nice views. Lingering winter. Lots and lots of rocks. And there’s even a bit of super-powered soil and the hearty vegetation it nurtures.

Oh! And there are marmots and wolverines.

Yes, it’s the story you’ve all been waiting for: Meet the alpine’s portly whistler and its chief nemesis, a predator even more remarkable than a superhero once played by Hugh Jackman.

via GIPHY

And I say portly with the utmost respect.

The fact any animal – much less a beaver-sized rodent like the marmot – can make a living in a landscape as harsh as this one is downright amazing. That the very same animal can get, um, portly while doing it? Even more impressive.

Hoary marmot

Can’t believe we were able to capture a photo of the extremely elusive wolverine, but we did!

It’s debated about when this marmot – the hoary marmot – first decided to set-up shop in an area that virtually no other animal wanted, but it’s very likely it had second thoughts about its evolutionary niche right about when the snow started falling.

Luckily for the marmot, they evolved a superpower: sleep. (Should we all be so lucky)

You see, a marmot’s eyelids start getting a wee heavy in the dog days of summer and by September – I mean, fall is so overrated ? – they’re fast asleep.

True hibernators, marmots – unlike those fake-sleepers, bears – stay tucked in their den until mid-May or until the snow recedes just enough to allow them to stop sleeping in their dens and start sleeping on rocks in that rejuvenating sun.

Which might

make you

think marmots

are lazy.

And you’d be right. But, from time to time, they actually do do hard work. Emphasis on the ?do-do?.

After a marmot eats grass, it, well, poops and marmot poop, as it turns out, is a delicacy of the pika – a tiny (creepy?) member of the rabbit family who also thought, why not live in a frozen desert?

Also, as it turns out, pika combine marmot poop with other grassy foods and let that combo ferment – yum! – in the pika’s quasi-cellar. That helps with water filtration up here that, when not in place, can cause all kinds of problems for a whole lot of people downstream, as we’ve learned the hard way.

(Also, I bet you’ll never look at glacier ‘fresh’ water in the same way: you’re welcome!)

So, as you can see, marmots do serve a very important evolutionary purpose by simply pooping ?. (Good for them.)

Kind of important to biodiversity as well is that they’re good at communicating with each other. It’s how they stay alive to poop their super poop.

via GIPHY

You see, these social rodents have fairly complex social structures, complete with outcasts.

(Well, recent studies suggest marmots don’t actually like being social but have discovered that being social helps them live longer so they tolerate other marmots…which sounds like a few human families I know. But then again, a lot of marmots I’ve seen sure don’t look like they’re faking their love…also like a few human families I know.)

I don’t know what it takes to tick off a group of marmots, but when ostracized, the outcasts don’t sulk: They stand guard and hope to get back into the clan’s good books by whistling a fair warning to its marmot tormentors when trouble comes a calling.

(Ironically, the hoary marmot’s other name is whistler which is how, you guessed it, everyone’s favourite COVID hotspot – I mean, ski resort – got it’s name. Whistler didn’t want to name their town hoary – fair enough – but naming the town after what is essentially the outcast member of a rodent clan might also not be the best branding accomplishment in the world, but I digress.)

Which, as defenses go, isn’t the best, but I guess it’s better than what the French traditionally offer up. Anyway, what’s a marmots’ alternative? Look cute? I mean they are, but that’s not going to dissuade a wolverine from having a go.

And

wolverines

do have

a go.

They are the primary regulator of the alpine’s pooper-in-chief, though they do prey on more than marmots.

Like bighorn sheep. Mountain goat. Moose. The occasional grizzly. Especially if it tries to defend its kill.

Wait, those are just urban (nature?) myths, right?

Nope.

They might get exaggerated – I’m mean no one goes all in on every fight every time, but wolverines have been known to do more than bluff a grizzly and though they don’t always come out on top, sometimes they do. Even against multiple grizzlies.

via GIPHY

Though relatively small in stature, wolverines are fierce, strong and, like their fellow mustelid or weasel family relatives, pack a serious bite. They might be, kilogram for kilogram, the most powerful – or, at least, bravest – predator on the landscape.

As a wise man once tweeted, height doesn’t measure heart.

So if the wolverine can hold its own in a bear fight, no matter how much an outcast marmot might whistle, the wolverine is winning more often than not (and maybe making the outcast an outcast for good, if you know what I mean).

Which is good news for managing a fast reproducing rodent like the marmot. Especially when you consider for all of its superpowers, the wolverine isn’t great at reproduction.

They’re like grizzlies in terms of being slow to reproduce. Also? They’re very habitat specific. Things need to be large and wild and generally free of both wolverines (they’re such territorial buggers) and humans (who, despite what Len Wein may have led you to believe, they definitely don’t love).

That means wolverines often need to travel to find a new territory or a mate or even food. Sometimes that can mean walking 30-40 kilometres in a day. And mountains never get in their way.

Unlike bears and wolves that always try to find the paths of least resistance, wolverines will literally take the straightest path possible, even if that means climbing up and over and down a mountain.

The things a wolverine will do for love. In fact, they will do almost anything for love.

But like Meatloaf once sang in a song that everyone wishes they never heard, the wolverine will do anything for love, but it won’t do that. And that, in this case, is the real wolverine’s real adamantium: roads.

In fact, they seem to know roads are their adamantium and try really hard to avoid them. Really hard. Like so hard that recent studies have shown wolverine populations are actually fracturing because they refuse to cross the gazillion roads we’ve built literally everywhere.

That means wolverines are becoming isolated – from food and from love. And, ultimately, that will mean fewer and fewer wolverines.

Which is

a problem.

Not only are they everyone’s favourite animal in Mount Robson – heck, anywhere – they also do that marmot managing thing.

Unlike wolverines, marmots don’t mind people or roads. In fact, recent studies have shown that the marmot is the mammal most easily adapting to climate change. Which is great news for the marmot and its poop-loving sidekick, the pika, but without wolverines, it’s probably not great for biodiversity. Because, if you haven’t heard, when rodents or herbivores get out of control, they tend to overgraze and that causes a lot of problems, like killing the very food marmots need to eat. That, in turn, means eventually pika will lose their prized marmot poop and, as we’ve already covered, that isn’t great for everyone who lives downstream of pika.

So, yeah, we need wolverines to help with this and, actually, one other thing.

Because wolverines like to eat (their Latin name is gluten after all) and because they travel far distances, that means they are excellent at distributing – let’s call it distributing – carrion (dead things) across the ecosystem. That, as you know, is helpful for soil, enabling it to do all of the wonderful things that it does for, you know, every living thing.

How do we keep a nationally threatened animal like the wolverine around to do all this important work for us?

Well, they seem to like parks (though the bad news is that we don’t always love parks and even when we do, we’re not super great at connecting them). Highway over/under passes built for wildlife might help. So too might creating small, wild corridors – like a secret animal highway – for wolverines to help them pass by people who live on this landscape.

But we probably need to find other ways to coexist with and link together wolverine populations as well.

Variety isn’t just the spice of life; it’s also the key to conservation.

It’s how we can conserve the top regulator of the portly alpine poopers. It’s how we can sustain wolverine-enhanced biodiversity. It’s how we can say thank-you to an animal that inspired humans to write a beloved comic-turned-okay-movie about an animal that, while not superhuman, is certainly super cool.

via GIPHY

What do you think?

What strikes you most about the wolverine? The marmot?
What feature do you like best of the wolverine? The marmot? Why?
Do you have wolverines and/or marmots in your area? What type of marmot? If not, where is the closest region they both exist?
What is the current estimate of wolverine and marmot populations in your region, or the region closest to you that contains a populations?
What is a niche? What is the wolverine and marmots niche?
List the characteristics of the wolverine and the marmot that help them both survive.
What other close predator to prey relationships exist in your region?
What is a keystone species? Give an example of keystone species that you can find in your community.
Explain what would happen if the wolverine population declined. If the marmot population declined. How might that affect you?
Do you believe ecosystems could survive without the relationship between wolverine and marmot? Why or why not?
What don’t we know much about when it comes to the wolverine? The marmot? How might we find this out?
What other solutions can you come up with that might help the wolverine survive and thrive in their ecosystem?

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