This image that I made of a wolverine (Gulo gulo) has recently been utilized by not-for-profit organization Conservation Northwest in a video presentation that has been shown to supporters in the context of their annual fundraiser auction, “Hope for a Wild Future“.
Conservation Northwest is a nonprofit that has been protecting and connecting old-growth forests and other wild areas from the Washington State Coast to the BC Rockies since 1989. In this timeframe, they have been ensuring such region remains wild enough to support wildife, from wolves to grizzly bears to mountain caribou, and they have been working with local communities on forest restoration and wilderness protection projects. Conservation Northwest is supported by around 5,000 families and hundreds of volunteers who together provide 70 percent of their funding.
For more information about Conservation Northwest and their projects, as well as how to get involved or make a tax-deductible donation, please check out their Website.
Wolverines are the largest terrestrial members of the weasel family (mustelids). Wolverines are shy of humans and therefore very hard to encounter in the wild (the image above is of a captive animal). Although technically omnivores, wolverines have a strong preference for meat, which makes them strong, aggressive and fearless hunters, known to fight for their food even against wolves or bears,
Wolverines are both scavengers and active predators, able to take down prey over five times their size! These solitary animals may travel 15 miles (24 km) in a day in search of food. Nowadays, they mostly live in Northern Europe and Russia, in Canada, Alaska, and in remote wilderness regions in the northern and western mountainous States of the US. Wolverines are threatened not only by habitat loss but by climate change, trapping, and highways: this has seen their numbers drop considerably in the United States, so much so that today they are thought to number just 300 in the lower 48 States. Wolverines have been recently recommended for protection under the Endangered Species Act by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Sources: National Geographic; BBC Nature; Conservation Northwest; Defenders of Wildlife
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Clicks & Corks 
I didn’t even know that wolverines existed prior to watching X-Men. Sounds ridiculous but it’s true!! They’re beautiful animals and your photograph manages to capture both calm, gentle qualities and their predatory nature in the same shot. Love it 🙂 I’ll take a look at the conservation website. Great that your photo was used for such a noble cause.
Hehehe, I can imagine you don’t get those Down Under, but I have not seen a kangaroo or koala bear in real life either… unfortunately, I should add! 🙂
Thank you, Laura: glad you liked the shot. And yes, it was great that they used it.
Shared on facebook!
if you want to be friends on facebook, it would be easier if you would friend me– I’m the only Tracy Lee Karner on the planet.
Okay, this is going to open up a whole can of worms…
So, I am not on FB personally and I have to say I have very little inclination to join for a number of reasons. C&C is not on FB either, at least for the time being. Fran (who is not personally on FB either) and I opened a FB page for Flora’s Table more as an experiment than anything else and we set it up so that whenever we post to the blog the posts automatically appear on that FB page.
Problem is that, maybe due to our FB illiteracy, well… we have no idea why, but we cannot figure out a way to “like” other FB users or pages. That’s the sad truth of it! I mean, if we sign in and visit a page that we would like to… like, there is no like button that shows up and lets us do that. Of course, should you have any wisdom to share with us on why that happens, I would sure listen! 🙂
Thank you, Tracy.
I totally understand why someone would decide not to be on facebook — I’m only there because so many of my “people” who are scattered all over the place use it, and it turns out to be an easy way to stay in touch with all of them.
The “page” function turns out not to be very friendly for real interaction. It assumes you want to be an advertising business, and the only way it becomes really effective is to pay facebook to make it more so… I signed my book up for a page but I haven’t really used it because I’m not about to pay for it to be effective.
I have found that my personal account drives traffic from facebook to my blog, so I’ll keep on with that. But for someone like Fran who doesn’t want to be out in public in a personal way, facebook would stink. Better to just stick to wordpress…
Thank you, Tracy! 🙂
Wolverines are notoriously bad-tempered, Stefano. How ever did you get this wonderful photo? I come from Michigan, “The Wolverine State”, and we were taught about the animal and how it disappeared from Michigan 200 years before. One was spotted, though, about 10 years ago. It’s whereabouts now are unknown to me but I like thinking that it found a mate and they’re busy raising babies somewhere in my home state. Thanks for sharing your photo and for spreading the word about Conversation Northwest.
Thank you, John! You are absolutely right: wolverines are bad tempered and very wary of humans. I could get the shot because, as I mentioned in the post, this was a captive animal which I photographed in a confined space. In the wild I only caught a very quick glimpse at a wolverine in Alaska, which however disappeared in the brush before I could even say “wolverine”! I sure hope your Michigan wolverine is busy raising babies and making new ones – it would be neat if wolverines came back to States they used to live in – granted, the gene pool could be quite narrow, but that’s a different story! 😉
Being a diehard Buckeye, it is difficult for me to “like” such a post, but I am an environmentalist first, a college football fan second. Nice post!
Ha! Glad you could force yourself to cross the sports divide and just for this once “embrace the wolverine” 😉
Thank you for the comment, Jeff.
A wonderful capture!
Thank you, Elena! 🙂
So wonderful to see that your images are being used in other forums Stefano. I can definitely see some of your pictures gracing the pages of National Geographic!
Thank you so much, Heather: you are way too kind! 🙂 Now, if only the editors of National Geographic realized how much they are missing out on!… 😉 😉 😉
I’m very happy that this great shot was used for such a noble cause, well done, Stefano!
i have seen wolverines a couple of times in Norway, you don’t get to see them very often. I like the German translation “Vielfraß”, meaning eating a lot, like anything that comes his way.
Big hug from England
Dina
Thank you, Dina: so exciting that you got to see wolverines in the wild! They are so hard to come across! I also think the German name for them is very appropriate: they really can be pretty aggressive when they see something edible! 🙂
Have a wonderful weekend,
Stefano
You know that the UMichigan animal is the Wolverine. So I am very familiar with them. Hilariously, there are none of them in Michigan, and may never have been (from what I was told). Our landlady showed me a stuffed Wolverine once, that die hard fans shot in Alaska, had stuffed (with its paw on a Michigan football helmet), and now brought to every game they watch in our backyard….weird, creepy and upsetting (seriously, with a football helmet???)…Great shot, yours looks much better!!
I know! In an earlier comment, John mentioned that there used to be wolverines in Michigan some 200 years ago, then they went extinct but 10 years ago one had been spotted once again…
The image of the stuffed wolverine clinging to a football helmet sitting in your backyard during the games is definitely creepy 😉 Now, I really wish I knew what Nina thinks about that!!! 😉
I had never heard of wolverines before so it is interesting to read about them. Good to hear about Conservation Northwest and the work they are doing.
I second Heather’s view about your images and National Geographic. 😉
Thank you very much, B: glad you found it an interesting read too.
And thank you so much for your way too kind comment: if I put together a petition for NatGeo editors to stop thinking about it and finally sign me up, I will start collecting the signatures from you and Heather! 😉
Have a wonderful week!