Wolverines in Idaho
Another totally boss old wolverine article with lots of incredible photos.
I updated it and did a heavy edit on it where I went off-topic and launched into some woke rant about wolves in the US being devastated as a consequence of White rule and capitalism. Which is ridiculous because it assumes that non-European Whites won’t wipe wildlife off the face of the Earth. Hell, Latin Americans, Arabs, Africans, Southeast Asians, and South Asians do a terrible job of preserving wildlife in their lands. Whites have actually become one of the best races on Earth when it comes to preserving wildlife.
The article then wandered off into a discussion about US Whites going racist and Republican as their numbers fall. One paragraph that was interesting said that
when a ruling group (racial, ethnic, or any sort of group) in a country is threatened with the loss of their dominance and rule in the country, they often resort to dictatorship or even fascism in a last ditch effort to preserve their dominance and rule over the other groups.
I wrote that almost 20 years ago and I should start fortune telling. What do you know? MAGA, a fascist movement that has taken over the Republican Party with the intent to create a permanent Republican Party fascist dictatorship in the US, has now stolen two elections by electoral fraud and is busy dismantling the US government, society, and our democracy itself. And it’s being led by among other groups, Whites (particularly working class Whites with a high school education who are victims of the system themselves) with a grievance who see White dominance and frankly White rule in the US being challenged by democratically minded non-Whites.
So these Whites are trying to install a permanent fascist dictatorship in the US to preserve their perceived dominance and rule. I blame American Whites for Trump. It’s our fault. We’ve destroyed this once beautiful country all for our petty greed and supremacism. Trump is one of the worst things American Whites have ever done to this country, and we’ve fucked this country in a hundred ways at least in the past. Indeed, non-Whites such as Blacks and Hispanics cause their own problems in the US, but at least they’re not installing a Goddamned fascist dictatorship!
Wolverines in Idaho
The wolverine in Idaho is generally considered inhabit three main areas:
The first and southernmost population is in the Sawtooth National Forest (northern part), Challis National Forest, Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho.
Yet another population is the central population in the Lochsa River Drainage in the Clearwater and Bitterroot Mountains in Clearwater National Forest.
A third population is the northern population to the north in the Selkirks along the Canadian border.
The three populations are separated from each other, although at least the first population is thought to be healthy. Nevertheless, we continue to get reports of wolverines in other parts of Idaho. A previous post noted a wolverine on a telephone pole along the Snake River Valley in King Hill, Idaho, earlier this year. A radio-collared wolverine recently traveled from the Grand Tetons in Wyoming across the Blackfoot and Caribou Mountains in the Targhee and Caribou National Forests in Southeastern Idaho, across private lands to the Portneuf Range west of the Portneuf River. This range is about 20 miles east of Pocatello, Idaho, and encompasses part of the Caribou National Forest and the Fort Hall Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation.
The breathtaking Portneuf Range east of Pocatello, Idaho, where the radio-collared wolverine ended up. It promptly turned right around and went back to the Tetons. In the Basin and Range Region.
A grazing allotment on the Blackfoot Mountains in Southeastern Idaho. Lance Armstrong, the peripatetic wolverine, crossed this range on his way from the Grand Tetons to the Portneuf Range opposite Pocatello, Idaho. Grazing is devastating BLM and Forest Service land in this region. The problem is particularly acute in Southern Idaho, as it is more arid. All livestock grazing needs to be banned in at least these areas. Incredibly, livestock grazing is allowed in National Forest wilderness areas. The only way the 1964 Wilderness Act could get passed was to grandfather in these grazing allotments. It’s ridiculous that grazing is allowed in wilderness areas. Grazing is particularly destructive in high-elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada and anywhere in the arid West.
The cow evolved in England and prefers a cool climate with lots of water. In the arid West, cows congregate during the summer in the riparian areas, which they completely devastate. A grand total of 2% of all US beef comes from public lands in the West – most beef comes from feedlots in the Midwest. Public lands grazing is welfare – the allotments are rented out to the ranchers at far below market value, so the taxpayer gets screwed. Not only do we get ripped off on the rental of our lands, but we also get our lands devastated in the process. The whole thing is insane. If ranchers can’t make it ranching on private land, they need to get out of the business. Furthermore, increasingly, public lands ranching is going corporate. Mom and Pop ranchers are going out and ranching corporations are in. Many public lands grazing allotments are now run by corporations as investment vehicles.
The long-ranging wolverine above was finally killed by a trapper just over the Montana border in the Centennial Range. This was before the wolverine was listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and Montana had legal trapping of wolverines. Since the Centennials range into Idaho, we ought to add the Centennial Range in the Targhee National Forest to the wolverine’s range in Idaho.
The spectacular Centennial Range on the border between Idaho and Montana. This is where the long-ranging wolverine named Lance Armstrong was finally killed by a trapper over the border into Montana.
Additional searching around the net noted that a wolverine had been shot dead by some boys in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho a few years back. They were worried and they brought it in to the Department of Fish and Game office, but the wardens let them go because they were kids and did not know what they were doing, although the wolverine is protected in Idaho.
The Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho. Some teenage boys shot dead a wolverine here about three years ago, but were not charged. Clearly, wolverines do exist in this part of the Colombian Plateau. This is where Evil Knievel tried his ill-fated motorcycle jump decades ago.
There are various definitions about what constitutes the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The most parsimonious definition says that it starts at the spectacular Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho. It seems to continue west about 30 miles to 1000 Springs (great pics on that page) at Hagerman, where Wikipedia implies that it ends. So this wolverine was apparently killed in the canyon between Twin Falls and Hagerman. That’s only about 47 miles north of the Nevada border. Way further afield, in the Seven Devils Mountains of far Western Idaho in the Hell’s River Canyon of the Snake River, wolverines exist. This large document includes in an appendix a report called Survey of Wolverine Dens in the Seven Devils Mountains of Hells Canyon.
The gorgeous Seven Devils Range in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. This range borders on Hell’s Canyon and may serve as a steppingstone for wolverines to travel from Idaho across the Snake River to the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon.
There are also reports of wolverines in the Wood River Valley area. Part of the Wood River runs about 30 miles north of Twin Falls, but the Wood River Valley refers to private land about 60-70 miles north of Twin Falls. It includes the towns of Ketchum, Sun Valley, Hailey and Bellevue. We should extend wolverine habitat down from the Sawtooths into the Wood River Valley. There have been recent sightings in the Sun Valley area. The webpage for Power County, a county in southeastern Idaho west and southwest of Pocatello, claims that wolverines occur there. There are various ranges there, including the Bannock Range, the Sublette Range and the Deep Creek Range.
The spectacular Deep Creek Range in Southeastern Idaho. It is about 40 miles long and is bounded by Arbon Valley on the East and Rockland Valley on the West as it ranges through Power County. Wolverines may well exist here. Another Basin and Range mountain range.
The Bannock Range in Southeastern Idaho. Both the Bannock and the Deep Creek Ranges are southwest of Pocatello. The Bannocks extend from Pocatello 85 miles south into northern Utah through the Caribou National Forest. Wolverines may well exist in this range. Also located in the Basin and Range region.
Photos of all of these beautiful ranges can be seen on Ralph Maughan’s excellent blog. Maughan is a professor of political science at Idaho State University in Pocatello. He’s also really big on wolves. Wolves in some places are listed as either Endangered (parts of the Pacific Northwest, California, and the Southwest) or Threatened (Minnesota) under the Endangered Species Act.
Wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and parts of eastern Oregon and Washington have been delisted and are now managed by state agencies, but I’m not sure how good of a job they are doing. I know that 20 years ago when they first delisted those wolves, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana absolutely devastated their wolf populations. Idaho has 1,229 wolves and it wants to reduce it to 500. Montana has a population of 1,200 wolves and it wants to reduce it to 450. Wolves are declining dramatically in all three states under state management.
Numbers are much smaller in Oregon and Washington but wolves are increasing in both states. Occasional wolves are seen in far Northern Utah and a pack was recently seen in far Northeastern Nevada. They are doing well and increasing in California. Web page on myths about wolves. Wolves are hardly dangerous at all to humans.
In summary, occupied wolverine habitat in Idaho should be extended beyond the description at the beginning to the post to Power County, Elmore County, the Snake River Valley, the Blackfoot Mountains, the Centennial Range, the Caribou Range, the Snake River Range, the Big Hole Mountains, the Targhee and Caribou National Forests, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the Portneuf Range, the Seven Devils Mountains, the Snake River Canyon, and possibly the Bannock and Deep Creek Ranges.
References
Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. 2000. Petition for a Rule to List the Wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the Contiguous United States . Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
Edelman, Frank and Copeland, Jeff. 1999. “Wolverine Distribution in the Northwestern United States and a Survey in the Seven Devils Mountains of Idaho.” Northwest Science 62:181-185.
Groves, Craig R. 1988. “Distribution of the Wolverine in Idaho as Determined by Mail Questionnaire.” Northwest Science 62, 4:181-5.
Predator Conservation Alliance. 2001. Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).
Wildlife Conservation Society. 2004. “Wolverine Takes A Road Trip: Scientists Track Male Animal over a Three-state, 550-mile Walk-about.” Science Daily.
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