Quotes from Douglas H. Chadwick

Today the wolverines of the Lower 48 are confined to a few remote parts of Montana, Idaho, and northern Wyoming, with perhaps a dozen more in Washington's North Cascades. They total no more than 500 and more likely number just 300 or fewer.

What little was known about the range of wolverines made it plain that they are tied to environments with fairly heavy snowfall and cool year-round temperatures.

In any case, the list of adaptations that allow wolverines to make an ally of winter is impressive. Yet until scientists started to focus on climate change, no one gave much thought to how creatures with built-in snowshoes, a super-cozy fur coat, smoldering metabolism, and food cached in nature's refrigerators are supposed to handle swimsuit weather in our ever-toastier age of Industrial Exhaust.