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SURVIVAL WORRIES MORE THAN SHADOW

COWICHAN VALLEY CITIZEN February 1, 2008 Kevin Rothbauer. Citizen Staff This Saturday is Groundhog Day, but don’t count on Vancouver Island’s groundhogs to let you know if winter will be ending soon or not. The Vancouver Island marmots — the Island’s closest cousins to the groundhog — won’t rise from their burrows for a few more months, ending a hibernation period that began in October. “Everybody’s still hibernating,” says Crystal Reid, a wildlife technician and contractor for the Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Foundation. “They have active periods where they move around in their burrows, and we can see them at our facility, but they’re still hibernating until May. ”Marmots are forced to stay underground for several months for a number of reasons. “Vancouver Island marmots live high up in the mountains,” Reid explains. “There’s tons of snow, so there’s nothing for them to eat. In spring, when they come out in the snow, they’re easy to see for predators.” There are six species of marmot in North America, and four in Canada: the Vancouver Island marmot, hoary marmot, yellow-bellied marmot, and woodchuck or groundhog. The Vancouver Island marmot is the only one that lives on the Island, and the only endangered marmot in Canada. It is the goal of the Marmot Recovery Foundation to preserve the Vancouver Island marmot and assist in the growth of the wild population. There are four captive breeding centres in Canada — the Calgary Zoo, the Toronto Zoo, the Mountain View Conservation & Breeding Centre in Langley, and the Foundation’s own Mount Washington Marmot Recovery Centre — and marmots raised in the centres are released into the wild in the hopes of creating a stable wild population. When Reid started working with the Marmot Recovery Foundation four years ago, the wild population was down to around 20 animals that the Foundation was aware of. The year before, the foundation had started to release animals from its captive breeding programs, and since that time, the wild population has grown to around 90. Some of the animals released from the program have since had litters of their own in the wild, which is a very promising sign for the recovery of the species.“ We found out that we could release marmots from captivity and that they would do things that wild marmots do,” says Reid, noting that marmots bred in captivity also react to predators in the same way as wild marmots. “Initially, when we took marmots into captivity, we weren’t sure it was going to work, but so far, they’ve acted just like wild marmots.” One of the challenges the Foundation faces when releasing marmots into the wild is ensuring that the animals find a suitable place to live. Marmots live in alpine meadows, but some animals mistake clear cuts for proper meadows, which isn’t the case. “It’s tricky, because clear cuts are good habitat when they initially get there, but it gets harder because they can’t see their predators as well,” says Reid. Vegetation grows higher in clear cuts than it does in natural meadows, and logging roads give predators easy access to clear cuts. Cougars, golden eagles and wolves are the main predators of the Vancouver Island marmot, and all of those animals are plentiful on the Island. The more the Foundation studies marmots, the more apparent the threat is from predators. “Originally, the researchers would go in and count marmots in the spring, and they thought that a lot of them were dying in hibernation,” says Reid. “But we found out that a lot were dying from predation.” Although there aren’t many Vancouver Island marmots in the wild right now, the species’ range covers much of the Island, from Heather Mountain near Cowichan Lake to Mt. Cain, north of Campbell River. Marmots were introduced to Mt. Cain this past summer, at the same time they were reintroduced to Strathcona Provincial Park. The Foundation would like to help establish a stable population of between 400 and 600 marmots in the wild, a process that it estimates will take about 10 years. “It’s a tough program,” says Reid. “It’s going to take a while to build. We know it will work, but it’s a matter of getting resources. ” The Foundation has received assistance from the Ministry of the Environment and the British Columbia Conservation Corps, as well as corporate assistance from BC Hydro, TimberWest and Island Timberlands, but there’s still a long way to go. Members of the public can help out financially by adopting a marmot or purchasing a marmot toy from the Foundation, or simply by helping to educate others about the species’s situation. “Some people think that the (Mt. Washington) ski hill closes because of marmots, but that’s not true,” says Reid, noting one myth surrounding the Vancouver Island marmot. “There’s actually a wonderful relationship between the ski hill and the marmots. Mount Washington Alpine Resort is one of the primary partners of the Marmot Recovery Foundation. It’s kind of neat that going up on the chair lift or skiing down, there are marmots hibernating under there. ” For more information on the Vancouver Island marmot, visit the Foundation’s web-site at www.marmots.org.

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