Wolverines are one of North America's most elusive carnivores, with welfare challenges from climate change threatening their snow-dependent reproduction and expanding human disturbance.
Wolverine welfare is intimately tied to snowpack persistence. When spring snow melts before wolverine kits are old enough to thermoregulate independently, entire litters die. This is not a rare event but an increasingly common consequence of climate warming - wolverines are experiencing reproductive failure across large parts of their range. Individual wolverines trapped or snared as bycatch in carnivore management programs experience pain and slow death. The combination of reproductive failure and adult mortality creates welfare and population impacts across this sparsely populated species.