Wolverines are specialist predators of cold mountain environments whose survival depends on persistent spring snowpack increasingly threatened by climate change.
Wolverine welfare is directly tied to the persistence of cold alpine ecosystems. As snowpack declines, female wolverines face increasing difficulty finding suitable denning sites, leading to reduced kit survival. The energetic demands of wolverines are calibrated to cold conditions — warming forces them to work harder to meet physiological needs in landscapes that are becoming less productive for their hunting strategy. Trapping causes acute suffering and removes individuals from populations with very low replacement rates. Climate adaptation for wolverines requires both emissions reduction to slow habitat loss and connectivity conservation to allow range shifts as conditions change. Protecting existing wolverine populations from additional stressors like trapping is a priority welfare intervention.