Wolverine Primary and Dispersal Habitat in the Western United States

Wolverines were extirpated, or nearly so, from the contiguous United States by 1930. … Gaps in knowledge of suitable habitat, population capacities, and potential for genetic exchange across a metapopulation can inhibit development of the most effective landscape-level priorities for aiding species recovery. The need to address these landscape-scale issues is becoming more pressing as climate change threatens to increase fragmentation of many populations. … In order to address these needs, this study: (1) modeled relative habitat quality at the level of species distribution; (2) identified areas suitable for specific wolverine uses that are biologically important and valuable for management purposes (survival, reproduction, dispersal); and (3) related population size to predicted habitat quality in order to estimate potential and current distribution and abundance. It then uses this information to identify spatially-explicit population-level conservation priorities across jurisdictions for this candidate threatened or endangered species.