A news release from the Rocky Mountain Outlook reports what conservationists have long feared. Wolverine population numbers are critically low.
The latest data from Parks Canada reveals a sobering trend: wolverine numbers in Banff, Yoho, and Kootenay national parks have dropped by nearly 40 percent over the last decade and a half. Once estimated at 34 individuals in 2011, there are now only about 18 remaining across the three parks, including just 13 females.
Despite the stark evidence, provincial governments continue to move in the opposite direction of precaution. Alberta recently lifted trapping quotas on wolverines, even though scientists estimate there may be fewer than 1,000 left in the entire province, with only 200 to 250 reproductive females. While scientists call for restraint, governments are making it easier to hunt and kill the animals they should be protecting.
These findings reinforce what conservationists have said for years. Protected areas are not enough if provincial policies allow killing at the borders. Banff, Yoho, and Kootenay parks may shelter wolverines, but without strong measures in the surrounding landscape, the parks function more like islands than safe havens. Now more than ever, we need buffer zones that give predators room to roam and a chance at survival.
Rather than strengthening protections, provincial governments have weakened them. Alberta’s decision to remove trapping quotas, at the very moment Parks Canada is warning of steep declines, is a textbook case of poor wildlife governance. It mirrors recent decisions to lower hunting ages, expand predator baiting, and reduce reporting requirements: all short-sighted policies designed to make trophy hunting easier while ignoring the science of population declines.
When government prioritizes special interests and industry pressure over scientific evidence, it creates a dangerous imbalance. For slow-breeding carnivores like wolverines, the consequences are dire.
Wolverines are elusive, tenacious, and deeply tied to the snowy mountain landscapes of western Canada. Their decline does not have to be inevitable, but this depends on government willingness to observe science and public will over special interests that serve the few, rather than the many.
If precaution means anything, now is the time to act. Otherwise, we risk repeating the story of Banff’s woodland caribou, a population so small that a single avalanche wiped them out. The difference is, this time, the threat is not a natural disaster; it amounts to willing and deliberate government actions.
