If your only reference for “wolverines” is either Patrick Swayze’s smokin’ mullet in “Red Dawn” or Hugh Jackman’s smokin’ abs in “X Men,” you’re not alone.
That’s because no actual furry, clawed wolverine — mullet or abs status unknown — has been confirmed in Colorado for 14 years. And that one spent the next seven years padding to North Dakota only to be shot by a rancher misguided about what ranked as a predator.
With the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now listing wolverines as officially “threatened,” the animal the Norwegians know as “fjellfross” clawed its way up the laddered protections of the Endangered Species list. The fiercely fanged, tirelessly foraging, and determinedly private critters could agree with wildlife advocates and state officials that Colorado might be their first choice for relocation.
We asked state and nonprofit experts our top wolverine questions, and now share their responses with you. All gratuitous pop culture references are ours, not theirs.
Why should we care about non-Hollywood wolverines?
They punch (and claw) way above their weight — at only 15 to 40 pounds they have battled grizzlies and won. Or at least played for the tie.
One male wolverine holds a territory 20 miles by 20 miles square. Trackers of radio collars have watched a wolverine climb up a 1,500-foot avalanche chute in 20 minutes. There are only 200 to 300 in all of the lower U.S., making them a rarity on par with their weasel-family cousins, the black-footed ferret. They scavenge deer, elk, moose or rabbits through frozen mountain valleys, and hunt at night. Seeing one would be an absolute bucket list entry for Colorado backcountry fans.
Is Colorado a natural home for wolverines?
We’re perfect, says Megan Mueller of the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Wild. It’s not just that Colorado’s mountains were the setting for “Red Dawn,” and that cinematic masterpiece’s plucky, mulleted band of high school rebels singlehandedly overthrowing a Russian/Cuban invasion of cruel soldiers brandishing rocket launchers and career-ending accents. It’s also that real-life wolverine mamas need long-lasting high altitude spring snow for burrows to protect their young. Climate change could leave Colorado with more of that high snowy band than anywhere else.
And “we have the largest remaining block of unoccupied habitat left for wolverines, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife,” Mueller said. Suck it, Wyoming. Modeling of reintroduction shows bringing wolverines back here could “increase their numbers in the lower 48 by 33%,” Mueller said.
Did we used to have a lot of wolverines not named “Jed Eckert”?
Absolutely. Some of them were named Darrell.
Wolverines were common in Colorado until the early 1900s, when trapping for their luxurious fur and poisoning by wary ranchers wiped them out.
As The Sun wrote in 2022, a radio-collared wolverine wandered south into Colorado in 2009, made it all the way down to the Leadville area in search of moose and a Blu-ray copy of “Deadpool.” That wolverine was, at the time, the only Coloradan in history who decided moving to North Dakota represented a positive life change.
That migration became the first known presence of a wolverine in North Dakota since 1889, and subsequent events might have explained why Wolverine AAA left the state out of the guidebooks: In 2016, a ranch hand in McKenzie County shot M56.
Does the new protected status for wolverines mean they might come back?
State officials and wildlife advocates are planning on it.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials have studied the possibilities of wolverine reintroduction for years. One of the recent serious efforts at reintroduction was in the 1990s, but the division then got caught up in the more urgent reintroduction of the Canada lynx.
The federal Endangered Species Act requires that reintroduction of listed species be done in cooperation with states, and Colorado requires the legislature to approve it. State and federal agencies go through a public dialogue process to consider concerns of landowners and other interested parties. Ski areas, which often seek to expand or clear trees on federal land where species like the lynx need habitat (and now the wolverine), are frequently one of those “interested parties.”
A new wolverine planning process began in earnest again in 2010, Mueller said. The state came up with what might be a workable plan, then largely shelved it in recent years to focus on the more controversial and complex effort to bring gray wolves back. Meanwhile, different presidential administrations flip-flopped on their support for listing the wolverine.
Colorado is now brushing cobwebs from the wolverine plan and talking to stakeholders again, Mueller said.
Colorado officials declined to discuss wolverine status at length, but did say they are studying the decision from Fish and Wildlife and will be busy again on wolverines.
“For more than a decade, the state of Colorado has been committed to advancing the restoration of wolverine populations in the state,” said a statement from division spokesman Joey Livingston. “We are currently reviewing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife listing decision to understand our next steps in the process to successfully reintroduce wolverines in Colorado.”
In past discussions, Mueller said, some wolverine concerns were raised by ski areas and livestock associations, including sheep ranchers in the high country. Wildlife advocates say wolverines eat primarily carrion, and do not attack live commercial animals. They might have more work to do with that in North Dakota.
“They don’t overlap very much with private land or places where people are going to be grazing, so I think there’s a lot of potential for those things to coexist here in Colorado,” Mueller said. “But that doesn’t mean that those folks won’t have concerns.”
What’s the endangered status of other Colorado species who don’t get their own movies?
Well, wolves do. See, “The Howling;” “Hound of the Baskervilles,” pretty much; “Cujo,” sort of; “An American Werewolf in London” (perhaps not a gray wolf, but still.)
So there’s the famous gray wolf, now scheduled for reintroduction into north central Colorado any week now as part of a Colorado voter-approved effort to expand territory for the endangered species.
But there are plenty of other species that formerly called, or currently but decreasingly call Colorado home, from river bottom to high mountain meadow. Here’s a list of Colorado’s endangered, threatened or studied-for-listing species:
Mammals:
- Black-footed ferret
- Canada lynx
- Gray wolf
- New Mexico meadow jumping mouse
- North American wolverine
- Preble’s meadow jumping mouse
- Tri-colored bat
Fish:
- Colorado pikeminnow
- Greenback cutthroat trout
- Humpback chub
- Pallid sturgeon
- Razorback sucker
- Rio Grande cutthroat trout
Invertebrates:
- Pawnee montane skipper
- Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly
- Monarch butterfly
- Regal Fritillary
- Western bumble bee
What’s your favorite scene from “Red Dawn”?
Thanks for that, we’ve waited more than 14 years for someone to ask. It’s got to be the opening scene where our 1984-coiffed teen heroes are in a classroom lesson about Genghis Khan and the Cubans parachute onto the playground and start murdering everyone with their accents. Charlie Sheen’s got his Wolverines letter jacket on, so you know he’s toast.
We never, ever had a history class remotely that interesting.
Where would we get wolverines from, besides Hollywood?
Canada.
Human rights officials suggest not sending paratroopers in any form, whether from Russia, Cuba or South Park.
Perhaps a trade is in order. They send us wolverines, we send them tickets to the Avalanche, which these days is the only group of Canadians with a prayer of winning the Stanley Cup.