Wolverines are threatened by climate change and trapping pressure — their welfare in the wild and the challenges of their conservation.
Wolverine welfare is threatened at both individual and population levels by trapping and climate change. Steel trap deaths cause prolonged suffering before trappers arrive to kill the animal. Climate change is a slower but ultimately more severe threat — reduced snowpack prevents denning success, forcing females to abandon kits or den in suboptimal snow conditions where kits may be exposed to lethal temperatures. For a species with such low population density and slow reproduction, each individual life lost to trapping represents a welfare harm and a conservation loss of the same magnitude. The conservation case for wolverine protection and the welfare case are inseparable.