The ‘good news’ concerns the Vancouver Island marmot, which a cooperative nationwide recovery effort is bringing back from the brink of extinction.

The Vancouver Island marmot earned a certain amount of recent profile through its representation as ‘Mukmuk’, a ‘mascot sidekick’ for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

But while preparations for the Olympics attracted much attention on the other side of the Strait of Georgia, a dedicated team of conservationists were quietly at work on Vancouver Island, attempting to save one of the world’s rarest creatures.

The Vancouver Island marmot is one of 14 related species found around the globe. The only marmot found on the island, it is distinguished by its chocolate brown fur and contrasting white patches. Its closest relatives are the hoary marmot on the mainland and the Olympic marmot, found on the Olympic peninsula in Washington. These marmots are also related to woodchucks, common at lower elevations.

If you were to go looking for the Vancouver Island marmot you would search small patches of subalpine meadows located between the forests of the lower slopes and the rock of mountaintops. That’s where, in the south and central areas of the island, small numbers of the marmot live on more than 50 species of grass and flowers and gather themselves together in small groups called colonies.

The marmots dig elaborate systems of burrows where they spend the months of September through April in hibernation, their hearts beating a mere three or four times per minute. A typical marmot is the size of a large house cat and, if it can avoid being eaten by predators, will live about 10 years.

Until recently the Vancouver Island marmot was in danger of disappearing entirely from the wild. The species was extirpated from Strathcona Park in the 1980s and by 2003 fewer than 30 remained in the wild on the island, on alpine colonies in the Nanaimo Lakes area and on Mount Washington.

Researchers have a few theories about why the population of Vancouver Island marmot went into decline, but little is known for certain. Don Doyle, a wildlife biologist with the Ministry of the Environment and a board member with the Marmot Recovery Foundation, explains there were probably never large numbers of the species, although archeological data shows populations were higher 5,000 to 10,000 years ago than now.

Habitat destruction often leads to the decline of a species, and the impacts of clearcutting and subsequent regeneration have been cited as a contributor to the marmots’ near extinction. But it’s a tough factor to argue in the case of the species’ disappearance from Strathcona, which is British Columbia’s oldest provincial park and has been protected from logging since 1911.

Don Doyle suggests another contributor could be changes in the predator-prey relationship. For instance, an increase in the population of rabbits—which were introduced by humans to Vancouver Island—could have prompted an increase in the number of golden eagles, which also prey on marmots.

"It (near-extinction) probably revolves around the fundamental problem of a small population," says Doyle.

Pulling the Vancouver Island marmot back from the brink has required the cooperation of a diverse group of partners, including researchers, government funders, the forest companies which own private lands where the marmots live, BC Hydro and the Calgary and Toronto zoos, which have been breeding captive marmots to provide a population to return to the wild.

The breeding program began in 1997 with four marmots captured from the wild and sent to the Toronto Zoo. In the years since, a total of 55 marmots – mostly pups when taken from the wild—have been recruited for breeding purposes. The captured marmots formed the basis of a captive population that now numbers between 160 to 175 healthy individuals who produce 40 to 60 pups annually. Once they’re weaned and acclimatized at the Tony Barrett Marmot Recovery Centre at Mount Washington, the young marmots are released back into the wild.

Releases began at the Nanaimo Lakes sites where remnant colonies still existed and, in more recent years, have included sites in Strathcona Park and in the Schoen Lake area further north. The objective is to eventually establish three ‘meta-population regions’—in the jargon of conservation biology—where populations can sustain themselves.

The numbers are encouraging. In recent years the Nanaimo Lakes and Mount Washington wild populations have been growing, which means that numbers of pups born are surviving at a rate faster than they’re being reduced by their predators—golden eagles, cougars, and wolves.

"It really started to pick up in 2008," says Victoria Jackson, Executive Director of the Marmot Recovery Foundation. She says a record 68 pups were born in the wild last year, up from 33 the year previously. This year researchers are expecting another 60 to 80 pups. "We’re breathlessly awaiting the birth of pups this spring,"

The combination of captive and wild births has helped push the wild population to between 230 and 270 Vancouver Island marmots. "I really look at this as we’re a third of the way there," says Ms Jackson, explaining the goal of the program is to establish a population of 500-600 marmots in the wild, spread over the three regions.

It may well be that, for marmots, there’s safety in numbers. Victoria Jackson describes observing a colony’s response to the arrival of the dark shadow cast by a golden eagle, looking for prey. "This resounding shrieking started," she says, referring to the marmots’ warning whistles. "You became aware of how many marmots were in the meadow."

Only the future knows whether the Vancouver Island marmot will be able to survive without the ongoing help of captive breeding once the recovery program achieves its goal. "After the population gets up to 600 we’ll need a few years of data collection to determine sustainability," says Ms Jackson.

"So far, it looks like its going to be successful," comments Don Doyle. "If things go well we might reach the recovery targets in a couple of years."

He adds, "for all the bad news that’s out there about endangered species, it’s nice to see one that’s a success."

To learn more about the Vancouver Island marmot and efforts to pull it back from the brink of extinction, look up the Marmot Recovery Foundation’s website at www.marmots.org where you’ll find updates on the marmots’ progress, learn about their ecology and even join the Adopt-A-Marmot club. And maybe, in a few years time, the whistle of the Vancouver Island marmot will be something we can look forward to listening for when hiking the backcountry alpine meadows of the south and central island. l