Wolverines are wide-ranging carnivores of boreal and arctic regions whose welfare is threatened by climate change reducing snow cover, trapping, and conflict with livestock operations.
Wolverines face overlapping welfare threats across their range. Trapping in leg-hold devices causes acute pain and prolonged suffering before a trapper returns — often 24 hours or more in remote settings. Animals caught in such traps may self-injure attempting to escape, losing limbs to frostbite or laceration. Climate change progressively degrades the snowpack that wolverines depend on for both denning and food storage, causing reproductive failure and starvation in warming years. Their extensive ranging requirements mean that even protected areas may be too small to maintain minimum viable populations without connectivity to other habitat blocks.