Wolverines are one of North America's most wide-ranging carnivores, facing welfare challenges from legal trapping, habitat loss, and climate change that threatens their snow-dependent reproduction.
Wolverines caught in traps experience days of suffering before trappers check their lines - a standard practice in many jurisdictions. The experience of trap confinement, injury from the trap itself, exposure to weather, and starvation or dehydration before death or retrieval represents severe, prolonged animal suffering. Wild wolverines are also facing existential threats from climate change - the loss of persistent spring snowpack is directly reducing breeding success as dens collapse. This means the entire population is experiencing reduced reproductive success and the associated stress of failed breeding attempts on a population-wide scale.