When a young Michael Lester started his career in the Royal Air Force in the U.K., he would never have believed what he would eventually be fighting to protect.
Lester has been involved in recovering the population of the critically endangered Vancouver Island marmots since 2014, when he first started working with the Marmot Recovery Foundation in Nanaimo.
Vancouver Island marmots, with their telltale chocolate brown fur, are one of the five marmot species that live in Canada and are endemic to Vancouver Island, i.e. they’re not found anywhere else in the world. In the early 2000s, these animals came dangerously close to extinction due to predation and shrinking habitats.
Lester is one half of a team that recently built a remote weigh scale that will allow researchers to monitor the weight of captive-born marmots released into the wild. The findings will help them ascertain if and how body weight affects female marmots and their pups, and whether supplemental feeding will improve their chances of survival in the wild.
Devin Ayotte, an engineering technician and Lester’s colleague at Vancouver Island University, modified the scale Lester built to include a system for identifying the marmots that stepped on it, as well as storing this data remotely for collection by field researchers.
Their project marks a step forward in the effort to bolster the population of these burrowing mammals. The numbers had plummeted to as low as 30 in the early 2000s, but have now grown to at least 300 individuals, thanks to interventions such as captive breeding programs and research done by the marmot foundation, the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo and Toronto Zoo.
Lester moved to Vancouver Island with his family more than 15 years ago after a career in the Royal Air Force as a communications electronics engineer. It was a fresh start and he “really wanted to get into conservation,” so he enrolled in the resource management officer program at VIU.
During his second summer as a student at the university, he worked with the Marmot Recovery Foundation as a wildlife technician.
“That job led me to realize that my calling was working with endangered species and making a difference by being out there, observing animals and helping to manage populations,” he said.
Although Lester now works at the VIU as a resource management and protection technician, he continues to volunteer with the foundation, training new field crew members and providing his expertise in tracking and releasing marmots.
A species on the brink
Through research and successful captive breeding programs at the Marmot Recovery Foundation, Calgary Zoo and Toronto Zoo, marmot numbers have increased, but the species isn’t secure in the wild yet.
“For every wild marmot captured for the breeding program, we’re able to release eight to nine captive-born marmots into the wild,” said Lester.
But not every captive-born marmot survives once released.
“They are often naive, don’t have the required skills, and end up becoming easy prey.”
Marmots live in subalpine meadows high in the mountains of Vancouver Island. These grassy meadows, just below the tree line, are formed by repeated avalanche events. The meadows are dotted with boulders that serve as lookouts and rock piles where marmots can burrow or take cover. The sparse trees provide them with a clear view of predators, such as cougars and wolves.
As a result of climate change, however, these meadows are disappearing. With less snow cover on mountain peaks, there are fewer avalanches to create and maintain the meadows that marmots depend on. When trees and vegetation don’t get cleared regularly, predators are able to stalk foraging marmots much closer to their burrows. This is one of the leading theories behind the decline in their populations.
Habitat enhancement, therefore, is another way in which the Marmot Recovery Foundation is helping this species to survive. This includes removing small conifers that would have naturally been flattened by avalanches.
Managing populations
In wildlife conservation, the task of ‘managing’ populations is different from research, explained Lester. When he started as a wildlife technician, his role involved counting marmots that had survived hibernation, as not all make it through winter.
For a marmot field crew, the counting usually begins in May, which is when the marmots start emerging from their burrows. Using radio telemetry and binoculars, the crew records the number of males and females in a given area and determines how to release captive-born marmots that are ready to be introduced. For instance, if they find that in one area, the male had died over the winter and the female didn’t have a potential mate, they would consider releasing two males in the area so the existing female can potentially mate and have pups. In this way, an accurate count helps conservationists decide where to release captive-bred marmots.
The job has its allure, especially for the young and adventurous, said Lester.
“Most people would love to be working in the summer, hiking up mountains, watching and trapping animals for a living … but it’s not for everyone,” he said. “You have to be OK with driving through difficult terrain and logging roads. You’ve got to know how to navigate with a map, compass and GPS, hike for hours up remote mountains often in the rain and cold and know how to survive the backcountry.”
In Lester’s case, the job has required a level of physical fitness and mental endurance – traits gained from his former career in defence.
“It’s one of those jobs where you really get to feel that you’ve made a difference … a real difference, bringing back a species,” he said. “It’s something you can tell your grandkids. It’s really quite rewarding to be a small part of the conservation effort.”
Whistle while you work
Lester’s time spent with marmots has made him curious about something else too: deciphering their whistles.
“Vancouver Island marmots have quite a vocal repertoire. They whistle to each other to raise alarm, but they also have other vocalizations that haven’t been studied as much. Certainly not in the case of Vancouver Island marmots.”
It would be “really cool,” he said, if conservationists could use modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to decipher the marmots’ language.
“This is already happening for a lot of other species like whales and wolves where individual vocalizations are being used to interpret meaning,” he said.
Although considerable progress has been made to save the Vancouver Island marmot from extinction, the species isn’t out of the woods yet. But thanks to passionate conservationists and teams at the marmot foundation and the zoos, these animals still have a shot.
editor@nanaimobulletin.com
