Wolverine diet flexibility allows survival across harsh northern environments, but climate-driven changes to carrion availability and prey populations are increasingly challenging individual welfare.
Wolverine dietary welfare through winter depends on the availability of large ungulate carrion from predator kills — a food source that is itself affected by climate and prey population trends. As wolf populations are managed, ungulate populations fluctuate, and wolverine access to winter carrion becomes less predictable. Wolverines that cannot access sufficient carrion during winter face starvation — a slow, distressing welfare outcome for animals that have evolved for harsh but predictable seasonal conditions. Conservation of the predator-prey complexes that produce the carrion wolverines depend on is as important for wolverine welfare as protecting wolverines directly.