Wolverines are elusive, live naturally at low population densities, and have large home ranges, making it difficult to estimate their population.
The last time Alberta did a population survey of wolverines, the estimate was that about 1000 breeding animals lived in the province. Because of the low numbers, wolverines were limited from being trapped or hunted in the province. Only one wolverine could be trapped per trapper per registered fur trapping management area, a limit that has been in place for approximately 25 years. Wolverines are considered a species of ‘special concern’ in Canada.
But that has all changed, with Alberta Forestry Minister Todd Loewen recently announcing that wolverines (as well as lynx, river otters, and fishers ) can now be trapped and harvested in unlimited numbers.
Why the changes? Is there new information on Wolverine populations showing that the numbers of these animals are healthy enough to warrant harvesting?
Nope.
Minister Loewen says the decision to lift limits on trapping and harvesting is being made to gather more data on the number of animals in the province. You know, kill the animals to discover how many lived here!
Alberta Government Logic
According to Loewen, it has become impossible for him to defend a ban on trapping these four groups of animals when he does not know the actual population numbers of the province’s lynx, river otters, fishers and wolverines.
So, rather than using other sampling methods that leave animals alive, such as DNA sampling, camera trapping, or aerial track surveying, Loewen hopes that Alberta’s workforce of 1600 trappers will get him the data he wants.
“It’d be really hard for us to replace that kind of local ecological knowledge by having maybe a few biologists run around trying to gather that data,” he said.
“[Trappers] keep track of the effort that it takes to harvest different animals, and [their] logbooks will help us gain that data that we can use to go forward and properly make a quota system that actually makes sense,” Loewen said in an interview.
“I think it’ll take a year or two to gather the data that we need.”
So, the government will now use trappers instead of biologists to estimate fur-bearing animal populations in the province, much like it now uses hunters rather than conservation officers to deal with problem grizzly bears.
Bill Abercrombie, the president of the Alberta Trappers Association, said that trappers feel a significant level of responsibility for animal sustainability.
“We are eager to take this to the next level and fulfil that responsibility,” he said.
When Global News Calgary asked Todd Loewen what groups were consulted before the change, Loewen responded that only the Alberta Trappers Association was consulted.
One user on Reddit said, “It’s disturbing that they will just make a decision like this without consulting those who have the background to recommend for or against.”
Responses to Trapping As A Wildlife Survey Method
Ruiping Luo, with the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA, says the government should use a census method that does not kill animals.
“We should follow the precautionary principle,” she said. “If we don’t have enough data, then we shouldn’t be allowing this kind of harvest when we don’t know whether or not it’s sustainable.”
“They’re just going to be doing open trapping all over the place and what effect is this going to have on biodiversity? It’s just open season on all these furbearers, which is just astonishing,” said John E. Marriott, co-founder of Exposed Wildlife Conservancy. “It’s the Wild West out there … Alberta continues to go backwards in wildlife management.”
Sarah Elmeligi, Banff-Kananaskis MLA and NDP Shadow Minister for Environment and Protected Areas, said that she was “shocked” when she heard about the regulation change, mainly because the status of the wolverine population in Alberta is deemed “data deficient.”
“Data deficient basically means there’s so few of them spread out over a large landscape that we don’t have enough information about wolverine to decide if they’re at risk or not,” she said.
A 2019 study titled The Sustainability of Wolverine Trapping Mortality in Southern Canada recommends that “future wolverine trapping mortality be reduced by 50 percent throughout southern British Columbia and Alberta to promote population recovery.”
The AWA said earlier this year, “The best available research indicates that wolverine populations have declined and are likely to continue declining unless actions are taken to protect them.”
Gilbert Proulx, a wildlife biologist and former head of the Humane Trapping Research Program, said, “Removing the guards, removing the checks on any species is not very smart because if there is a crash or a provincial crash, then they have to see what happened, and then it’s too late like we have seen in the past.”
Marriott referred to the change as a “sneaky, underhanded way of management.”
“They’re not advertising any of this stuff because they know the public is going to be upset about it, and they know there’s going to be a backlash,” he said.
Many critics see the move as a way to kowtow to pressure from rural constituents who wanted both a reinstatement of the grizzly bear hunt and a lifting of limits on trapping fur-bearing animals.
Many find it absurd that a government can make wildlife harvesting decisions without population data. It’s like determining the fish population by draining a lake and then placing angling limits on the lake afterward.
Is this the way we want our wildlife managed in the province?
If you follow the r/Alberta thread on Reddit, almost everyone there is against the government’s latest “wildlife management” move, which seems to be “trapping” many negative opinions.
Now that’s something the Government should actually count!
