Wildlife researchers have found that both recreation and roads affect wolverine populations in Canada's Rocky Mountains and Columbia Mountains.
It’s believed to be the first time that a study has shown, at a landscape scale, that recreation is linked to lower population density in a carnivore.
The study, led by Dr. Mirjam Barrueto as part of her PhD research at UCalgary, was published on Sept. 29 in Biological Conservation , a peer-reviewed international journal in conservation and environmental science. Co-authors include her supervisor, Dr. Marco Musiani, PhD, an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Science , as well as scientists from Parks Canada, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) and Montana State University.
“We wanted to figure out how the population is doing and what kind of impacts there are,” Barrueto says in an interview. “We found that there were very few wolverines in the Upper Columbia region” in southeastern British Columbia.
The paper, which covers one of the largest areas examined for wolverines, shows that there are fewer than 300 wolverines across 81,800 square kilometres in western Alberta and eastern British Columbia.
Barrueto says it could be about 30 per cent higher without current recreation and road levels.
“I was a bit surprised by the impact of recreation, to be honest,” she says. “Unsurprisingly, we found that road density is the other main predictor for density of the population — and, also for females. Road density was also a finding in previous studies.”
Recreation data, she notes, is based on publicly available heat maps from recreational apps. It represents backcountry skiing, including heliskiing and cat skiing, cross-country skiing and hiking in both winter and summer.
Barrueto says it doesn’t include snowmobiling, but notes that activity is likely captured in the road density data.
“Both human disturbances affected wolverine density,” explains Barrueto. “In areas with more disturbances, either road density or recreation, there were fewer individuals than in areas with less.
“That’s on a population scale, it’s not that they just avoided a small area, there were actually fewer individuals living there.”
Barrueto says researchers knew wolverines avoid busy areas, but they learned new information through the latest study — including that the impact of disturbances on wolverine numbers is sex specific.
Road density, as an example, affects females the most. That’s important because females are key for population recovery, particularly because wolverines are slow to reproduce and only have one to three babies every few years.
“They’re pretty small carnivores,” says Barrueto. “It generally seems stressful for most of these animals to be interacting with a human.”
She says the research is important for anyone who works or plays in wolverine habitat, herself included, to be aware of our impact.
“Do we want to have a landscape with just deer and coyotes? Or do we want to have a landscape that has space for wild things?”
The research makes five recommendations that include maintaining roadless and low road density areas; protecting low-disturbance, high-quality wolverine habitat; and limiting recreation in reproductive areas.
“Now that we understand some of the impacts, we can opt to start making management and planning decisions, so that wolverines will thrive in these places we all love,” says Barrueto.
That’s the part that co-author Dr. Aerin Jacob, director of science and research and Weston Family senior scientist at the Nature Conservancy of Canada, zeros in on.
"Our findings are stark," says Jacob. "What gives me hope is that this gives us something to act on, at every level. Whether that’s deciding about building trails, protecting and restoring habitat, or working to prevent and reduce impacts.
“That kind of collaboration is what effective conservation actually looks like,” she adds.
Biological Conservation
Observational study
Animals
Sharing the snow – outdoor recreation and roads reduce the density of a rare carnivore
29-Sep-2026
The authors declare no conflict of interest.