Spotting a wolverine makes float trip one to remember

A quiet 30-mile float down the Noatak River in late July by a pair of National Park Service employees was interrupted by a flurry of movement on the shoreline. Though the animal was far away, backcountry and interpretive ranger Kurt Anderson of Gates of the Arctic National Park, who was on patrol with Steve Behrns, thought it might be a small bear.

As the pair drifted closer in their canoe, Anderson realized the animal on the shore was actually a wolverine — a confident wolverine.

"He looked at us, ran to the water's edge 5 or 6 feet away, and stared at us," Anderson said. "Possibly he'd never had seen humans before.

"He was not scared at all, but it was great for me. First time I've ever seen one."

Typically solitary creatures, wolverine inhabit a variety of terrain across Alaska, but one constant is that they need plenty of room to roam. Fish and Game estimates that females each use up to 230 square miles, while males, which can weigh up to 40 pounds, use up to 380 square miles. Men and women who spend ample time in the wilderness can go decades without seeing one.

Fish and Game estimates that 550 a year are harvested by hunters or trappers, often for their highly-valued fur, prized for its beauty, durability and the fact that the guard hairs resist frost accumulation.

Anderson, who's been at Gates of the Arctic since May 24, said he appreciates the fact that "lots of people go their lives without seeing one."

"They've got a pretty good set of tools on them, (especially) a really good nose," wrote Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Howard Golden two years ago. "They can smell food over long distances or buried well under the snow.

"They can climb trees. They've got strong claws for digging and defense, and incredibly strong jaws for biting and crushing bone and frozen meat — not the same crushing power as a wolf, but then they're not as big.

"They're mostly built for scavenging," Golden said. "But they're very opportunistic and regularly kill small game" — including snowshoe hares, voles, ground squirrels and marmots. They're very opportunistic."