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Exploring the beautiful nature of California


California Nature:  Wolverine & Badgers


A series of wolverine photos were taken in the Tahoe National Forest on March 16, 2008 by a remote sensor camera.  This represents a third wolverine location where a wolverine was photographed. This camera station is part of the collaborative effort to obtain additional information on the whereabouts of the animal and to collect genetics samples. Wolverines are known to mark food they scavenge on by leaving scats (feces) or hair nearby. A remotely-triggered camera takes a photograph when animals visit this detection station.  If a wolverine is photographed, scats and hair are collected for genetic analysis.

Badgers are uncommon, permanent residents found throughout most of the state of California, except in the northern North Coast area. Suitable habitat for badgers is characterized by herbaceous, shrub, and open stages of most habitats with dry, friable soils. Badgers are nocturnal, but have been seen active during the day as well. Badgers commonly feed on mice, woodrats, kangaroo rats, ground squirrels and pocket gophers. They also will eat fish, snakes and lizards.
The badger is made for digging in California nature The California Badger is found at numerous localities in the Yosemite region, from the San Joaquin Valley on the west to Mono Valley on the east, and it ranges upward to an altitude of 10,350 feet. Yet it does not occur continuously over our Yosemite section as do several other wide-ranging species like the Gambel White-footed Mouse and Red-shafted Flicker.

Its distribution is controlled by the presence or absence of flat clear areas of soil, rather than by temperature or any of the other factors which limit the ranges of most animals. Thus, on the uncultivated level lands of the San Joaquin Valley, the badger is, or was originally, common; in the foothill districts where there are but few meadows or other level open spaces, it is scarce or wanting; in the main forest belt it is altogether absent; while on the high meadows near the crest of the Sierras and on the floor of the Great Basin, east of the mountains, it is again to be found in numbers

The badger's whole being is organized for digging. The body, especially the trunk region is thickset and muscular.. The legs are stout and short so that they can get an effective purchase. Both pairs of feet are disproportionately large, as compared, for example, with those of a Sierra Marmot. The claws on all the feet are large, those of the forefeet being especially long and heavy
In addition, the badger is curiously flattened horizontally in the general configuration of its head and body; this 'pancake' effect is emphasized by the greater length of the overhairs along the sides of the body. The ears are short, the eyes rather small, and the head is joined directly onto the body, with no definite neck region.

When hunting, the badger specializes in a method rarely used by any of the other carnivores of the region. The other predators hunt chiefly by stealth; the badger uses its prodigious strength and special equipment for the purpose and digs its victims out of their retreats. Nature has provided the badger with some means for locating accurately the underground nests of pocket gophers, ground squirrels, and rabbits. Whether smell or hearing or both function in this, we do not know. But once an occupied burrow is located, the badger quickly digs out and feasts upon the luckless inhabitants.
The wolverine is suddenly showing up in California Wolverines (Gulo Gulo) are the largest land-dwelling weasels. They have dark fur and a almond-colored stripe that runs down their back. Large and powerful, they resemble small bear and are known to attack animals much larger than they are.

For the third year in a row, biologists in California have spotted a wolverine in forest land in California's Sierra mountains. The species had been extinct in  the state for over 90 years before this male showed up, the the surprise and excitement of wildlife biologists." They're still trying to figure out how this guy got here. He would have had to cross some pretty open land in eastern wash and Oregon, which is not their habitat. We don't know if he was somehow caught and brought here or if he wandered down on his own," says Mark Pawlicki of Sierra Pacific Industries, on whose land the animal lives. Sadly, the male, dubbed 'Buddy,' seems to be looking for a mate. But the closest female wolverines are 800 miles away across both the Sawtooth and Cascade mountains, so  despite all his scent marking and posturing, he's  unlikely to find one.
DNA testing of tufts of hair he'd left allowed scientists with the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station to determine that he's definitely  related to the  Northern Rocky Mountain wolverine population, and not some hidden, long-surviving population in California.

Wildlife biologists thought wolverines had been wiped out in California more than eight decades ago by the fur trade. The species had not been seen in the state since 1922, when the last California wolverine was skinned. Turns out this wolverine is related to wolverines in the northern Rocky Mountains, particularly Idaho's Sawtooth Range, according to the U.S. Forest Service's genetics laboratory at the Rocky Mountain Research Station. That's 600 miles as the crow flies, but a great deal more on four feet.

Studies in Montana have documented wolverines traveling 19 miles a day, and a wolverine in Norway once moseyed 83 miles in a day, ecologists said. Still, no wolverine has ever been known to waddle over the Rockies, through the Blue Mountains in northeastern Oregon, across the Cascade Range through Lassen National Forest and into Tahoe, as this one is suspected of doing.
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