Another day, another moron doing something dumb and illegal in the woods…
Wolverines are clearly one of the coolest animals on the planet. They’re sometimes described as 1,000 pounds of attitude in a 30 pound body and are never afraid to throw down with any animal of any size, including wolves.
Back on November 10th, the remains of a wolverine were discovered along a closed US Forest Service Road in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge national Forest in southwest Montana.
According to NBC Montana, the federally and state protected wolverine was shot dead and skinned, it’s corpse left in the woods until a report was sent into the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks department. A game warden was able to locate the animal’s carcass and the hunt was on to determine who was responsible for the creatures death.
There are only 250 to 300 wolverines living throughout the entire United States and they face a ton of environmental challenges and are much less capable of adaptation than other animal species. While they are not currently listed as an Endangered Species, it’s expected they will be listed as “Threatened” when the US Fish and Wildlife Service makes a new ruling, which should come by the end of November.
To try and get some information, a total of $11,000 is being offered for anyone with information which leads to the arrest of the person responsible for killing this wolverine.
Kristine Akland, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, released the following strongly worded statement:
“The senseless killing of one of these incredible, rare mammals is heartbreaking and cowardly. We hope this cash reward encourages someone to step forward with information to bring the perpetrator to justice.”
Given how rare and near mystical these creatures are, I hope they get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, given it took place in the middle of nowhere Montana, I’m betting information is going to be hard to come by, but there’s always a hope.
These creatures are just too cool to go away, remember the one that walked towards a woman on a trail carrying a severed goat head?
We can’t be losing animals that do things like that…
