A Message from the Executive Director

Hello Wolverine Foundation Supporters!

2013 saw a lot of changes for TWF.  We brought in a new Director, Dr. Wayne Melquist, and a new Administrative Manager, Cheryl Copeland, our website had a makeover with the inclusion of a newsletter, thanks to Pat Fortino and WriteNowDesign.com, and we worked on the development of a new logo, which will be appearing soon.  But, most importantly we were able to provide grant support to two important research projects, thanks to your help and the support of our corporate sponsor, Wolverine World Wide.

We provided a $15,000 grant to the Central Idaho Wolverine/Recreation Project which is now in its 5^th year.  This project is seeking to understand the potential impact of increasing winter recreation, both snowmobiling and skiing, on wolverine populations.  This is an extremely difficult concern to address empirically and will most likely require several more years of field work in order to obtain an adequate sample size.

We provided $6,100 to a new project in its first year in NW Alberta, Canada.  Matt Scrafford, the principal investigator and PhD student at the University of Alberta is looking at wolverine ecology and the wolverine’s relationship with gas and oil drilling in northern Alberta.  Matt will be providing a progress report in the coming weeks but I can report here that he captured a whopping 24 wolverines this past winter!  This is an extremely exciting project that will help us better understand wolverine ecology in a portion of its range that has not been previously studied.

We hope to provide future support to these and additional projects in the coming years, all thanks to folks like you that have enabled us to do so for the past 18 years.  In addition, we hope to have a new products line in place in the next few weeks for all of you that have asked for tee shirts, hats, and coffee mugs.

Thank you again for your support, and our best to you for the coming year.

The Wolverine Foundation Directors and Staff