{"id":563541,"date":"2026-03-27T04:04:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T04:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/563541\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T04:04:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T04:04:27","slug":"gob-the-vancouver-island-marmot-journeys-back-to-breeding-centre-after-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/563541\/","title":{"rendered":"Gob the Vancouver Island marmot journeys back to breeding centre after release"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, Vancouver Island marmots<\/a> are released after spending the winter at the Marmot<\/a> Recovery Foundation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cOften in about five minutes, certainly within half an hour, they are out of their box,\u201d Adam Taylor with the foundation, told Global News.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re sampling the local plants and it\u2019s amazing how quickly they transition to exploring this brand new environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one little marmot had another plan.<\/p>\n

Gob, named after George Oscar \u201cGob\u201d Bluth II, a character played by Will Arnett on Arrested Development, decided he didn\u2019t want to be away from his friends anymore.<\/p>\n

Just two months after being released on Mount Washington, Gob returned to the facility.<\/p>\n

The little social animal spent time interacting with the other marmots still in the facility for several weeks before setting up a hibernation den underneath.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a bit of a no-no, so we decided to re-trap him and bring him back inside,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1:51
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVancouver Island marmot success story\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The Vancouver Island marmot, found only on Vancouver Island, is still making its way back from extinction after reaching a low of fewer than 30 animals in 2003.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Get<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGet breaking National news<\/p>\n

Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that point, the Marmot Foundation had already started bringing some marmots into captivity, fearing that the species were going to go extinct, and they had been breeding them, and finally, in 2003, when the population reached that low, they had started releasing captive-bred individuals back in the wild to recover,\u201d Dr. Jamie Gorrell, an associate professor at the University of Northern B.C. said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last 20 years, it\u2019s been this boom where the population went from less than 30 and now is over 400 marmots. So it\u2019s, as a conservation strategy, it\u2019s extremely successful at getting more marmots to come back into the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

But Gorrell said they are not out of the woods yet, as they are still vulnerable and there\u2019s only about 400 across Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore on Environment
\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cVancouver Island actually is pretty unique from geological history and the biological history of the island,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only about half of the mammal species that exist on the mainland of Canada that are occurring on Vancouver Island. So we\u2019re already missing a lot of species as it is, and we tend to be missing a lot of the high-elevation species. So things like sheep and goats. So marmots are really it. Marmots have the only sort of natural, endemic, high-altitude mammal species on the island.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorrell said that marmots are good for plants and the soil and carbon capture of the environment.<\/p>\n

He said he is not surprised Gob made his way back to his friends and it has happened before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does speak to the fact that when they\u2019re born in captivity, they\u2019re sort of raised in that environment, right?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you can almost imagine being thrown out into the world might be a bit of a shock to them, and just like other animals or other individuals or even humans in this case could be sort of acclimatized to a certain environment and where they want live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

For now, Gob is still hibernating and he\u2019s in good health, Taylor said.<\/p>\n

In the summer, they will release him again to see if he finds his wild side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis time we will be putting him a little bit further away from the facility,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really hopeful that with a little bit of an extra push, he will make that transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every year, Vancouver Island marmots are released after spending the winter at the Marmot Recovery Foundation. \u201cOften in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,295,47080,55,142184],"class_list":["post-563541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-marmot","tag-vancouver","tag-vancouver-island-marmot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}