Vancouver Island Marmot – Buttle Lake Supplementation & Monitoring 2017
The Vancouver Island Marmot is an iconic and endemic B.C. species, and also the most endangered mammal in Canada. This project is a strategic, statistically informed continuation of efforts to restore marmots to their historic habitat in the mountains around Buttle Lake in the Campbell, Puntledge, and Ash watersheds. Guided by the results from previous projects (2007-16), spring supplemental feeders will be installed at several locations to improve the likelihood of reproduction. A select group of captive-born and wild-born marmots will be released to vulnerable colonies in the region, bolstering the metapopulation and creating additional opportunities for in situ reproduction. Monitoring will increase our understanding of this marmot metapopulation and will inform future recovery efforts.
Update: 500th Vancouver Island Marmot released
Final Report: Executive Summary
The Vancouver Island Marmot (Marmota vancouverensis, Swarth 1911) is endemic to Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada, but was extirpated from historical habitat in Strathcona Provincial Park by the mid-1990’s. Over the past decade, the Marmot Recovery Foundation (MRF) has worked under the guidance of the Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Team to achieve objectives described in the Provincial Recovery Plan (2000, 2008, 2017) and National Recovery Strategy (1994) for this species. The primary goal for the Strathcona region was to re-establish a wild population in the region. Initially, reintroductions of captive-bred marmots were intended to create two metapopulations that would be geographically distinct and genetically isolated from one another by the presence of Buttle Lake. However, successful releases at the south end of Buttle Lake established some connectivity between these two small populations, which are now being managed as a single metapopulation. This report describes the methods and results from the 2017 field season, during which MRF addressed four categories of actions described in the Campbell River Watershed Species of Interest Action Plan: Species-Based Actions, Habitat-Based Actions, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Research and Information Acquisition (Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program 2011).
Click the provincial database link below to read the full final report for this project.