Wolverines depend on persistent spring snowpack for denning and food caching. As climate change erodes mountain and boreal snowfields, wolverines face habitat contraction that threatens population viability and individual welfare.
Individual wolverines experience welfare impacts from habitat loss through nutritional stress, failed reproductive attempts, and increased human-wildlife conflict as animals move into lower elevations. Failed denning attempts — when snowpack melts before kits are mobile — cause kit mortality and maternal stress. Food stress in late winter, when carcass availability declines and wolverines cannot cache effectively in shallow snow, causes extended periods of hunger. Conservation actions that slow climate change and protect old-growth forest directly improve welfare outcomes for wolverines by maintaining the ecological conditions their welfare depends on.