The wolverine (Gulo gulo) has partially recovered across Scandinavia following legal protection in Norway (1973) and Sweden (1969). Winter ecology monitoring reveals the welfare challenges faced by this solitary, wide-ranging predator in landscapes increasingly shaped by human infrastructure.
Wolverines injured in railway collisions in Norwegian mountain valleys experience traumatic blunt force injury, often fatal but occasionally survivable with rehabilitation. Orphaned wolverine cubs in winter dens cannot survive without their mother — females killed by legal hunting before cubs can be independently mobile cause secondary mortality of dependent young. Declining snowpack from climate warming is reducing den site quality, potentially forcing females to use suboptimal sites with higher predation risk. The welfare ecology of wolverines in recovering Scandinavian populations requires management that balances reindeer herder compensation with wolverine survival, using non-lethal conflict mitigation as the primary tool.