Wolverines are wide-ranging, solitary carnivores of boreal and alpine regions whose welfare depends on deep snow for denning and vast territories for foraging. Climate change and persecution are their greatest threats.
Wolverines are among the most physiologically and behaviorally demanding of large carnivores, adapted to some of the harshest environments on Earth. Their welfare in the wild depends on two factors directly threatened by human activity: deep persistent snowpack for denning, and vast unfragmented territories for foraging. Climate change is reducing both the depth and duration of spring snowpack across wolverine range, directly reducing reproductive success. Trapping causes acute pain through leg-hold devices that hold animals for hours until trappers arrive. The combination of habitat loss through climate change and direct mortality through trapping represents a compounding welfare and conservation threat to a species already naturally rare.