Four Vancouver Island Marmots were released on Mount Washington Tuesday, taking their first steps in the wild and another important step in their species\u2019 recovery. <\/p>\n
They were born in captivity a year ago and raised at the marmot recovery centre on Mount Washington, part of a three-decade-long effort to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.<\/p>\n
In 1996, there were fewer than 100 of the animals left.<\/p>\n
Watch below:<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that time, the recovery foundation was formed and a number of marmots were brought into captivity to start a conservation breeding program but the wild population continued to fall until 2003 and at the end of 2003 there were fewer than 30 Vancouver Island marmots left in the wild,\u201d said Marmot Recovery Foundation executive director Adam Taylor.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why days like today are so important. By the fall last year, there were roughly 420 marmots on the island.<\/p>\n
On this day the marmots are put in small travelling cages and taken to a ski run on the mountain then moved into a box with a burrow below. <\/p>\n
Then a few minutes later the curious animals poke their heads out and begin to explore their new surroundings.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know I spend a lot of my life worrying to be honest,\u201d said Taylor. \u201cSo we worry over winter what it\u2019s going to be like, we worry over the summer and then we get these moments like when you release the marmots and you see them come out and you see them doing just everything they\u2019re supposed to be and yeah it\u2019s really gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is a huge relief getting these marmots out,\u201d said Kevin Gourlay, field co-ordinator with the organization. \u201cIt\u2019s been an incredible effort by many, many people to get them to this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forty more marmots will be released in other locations on the island this summer as well. <\/p>\n
But last winter, with its warm temperatures and lack of snow, is expected to hurt the overall marmot numbers with a survival rate of maybe only 85 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout that extra insulation of snow marmots that are in the burrows, they have to spend more energy sort of coping with those temperature changes and unfortunately, that\u2019s already a really tough process and sometimes that extra energy expenditure is just enough to tip them over the edge,\u201d added Taylor.<\/p>\n
Climate change and their changing landscape could mean all sorts of challenges for the marmots in years to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreenery flushes up real green in the spring but then if it doesn\u2019t get enough moisture, it\u2019ll die off and become dead tinder and in that situation, there might be limited forage available for them,\u201d said Gourlay.<\/p>\n
Owen Petrovicic was one of the volunteers chosen to carry a marmot in a backpack carrying case to the release spot on the mountain. <\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that I wanted to carry them on my back because whenever I see these marmots on the chairlift or when I go mountain biking it\u2019s just really cool to see them,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s now up to the marmots to survive their first summer of predation by other animals and then their first winter in the wild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Vancouver Island Marmots were released on Mount Washington Tuesday, taking their first steps in the wild and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,270576,142180,66,142184,1062,323],"class_list":["post-758830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-critically-endangered-marmot","tag-mount-washington","tag-science","tag-vancouver-island-marmot","tag-video","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758830","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=758830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}