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Vancouver Island Marmot
Latin name: Marmota vancouverensis
Taxonomic group: Mammals (terrestrial)
Risk category: Endangered
Range: BC
Year of designation: 2000

For thousands of years, the Vancouver Island marmot has lived in the mountains of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

This housecat-sized ground squirrel is now extremely rare. The British Columbia ministry responsible for wildlife has designated it as Endangered under the British Columbia Wildlife Act. The Vancouver Island marmot is also listed as Endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), and by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Separated from other marmots on the mainland of North America, the Vancouver Island marmots developed into a distinct species (Marmota vancouverensis). They are different from their continental cousins in a number of ways: their colouring (a rich chocolate brown with white muzzle, chest and abdomen), their vocalizations (they whistle like no other marmot!), and many of their habits.

Vancouver Island marmots live at an altitude of between 900 and 1400 metres. Many have established their colonies (social groups of one or a few families) in areas which are steep and relatively inaccessible to humans. The colonies are so remote from human habitation that most people who live on Vancouver Island have never seen a marmot.

The Vancouver Island marmots’ natural habitat consists of small mountain meadows, many of which were formed by avalanches or fire. The marmots dig their homes (underground burrows) in the deep soil, perch on the surrounding rocks to watch out for predators, and eat the grasses, herbs and flowering plants growing there. And boy, can they eat! All summer long they pack away the food, preparing their bodies for their next activity – seven months of hibernation.

When they emerge from hibernation in the spring, two important things happen. Adult Vancouver Island marmots mate and produce litters of 3 or 4 pups. And some “teenage” marmots (aged 2 or 3) leave their colony to find a mate. They travel down their home mountains and cross over to a neighbouring peak. If they can’t find a potential mate on one mountaintop, they’ll explore other mountains until they find one. Many Vancouver Island marmots have covered scores of kilometers conducting these searches.

In the 1970’s forestry companies started clearcut logging at high elevations on Vancouver Island. Because these areas were very much like their natural habitat: wide open spaces, lots of soil to dig in, stumps to use as lookout posts; the wandering marmots started setting up colonies in the high clearcuts. By the mid-1980’s more than half of the world’s Vancouver Island marmots lived in these man-made habitats. They seemed to thrive. Early counts (1979-1986) conducted by government personnel, naturalists, hunters and loggers showed a doubling of the population. Between 1982 and 1986 they counted 235 marmots in different colonies. But in the late 1980’s, the population of Vancouver Island marmots began to decline dramatically. In 1988, representatives of federal and provincial wildlife agencies, universities, forest companies and conservation organizations formed a scientific Recovery Team. The objective: to save the Vancouver Island marmot from extinction.

By observing footprints and scat, Recovery Team researchers began to suspect that the logging roads and newly-cleared mountainsides gave land-based predators (wolves and cougars) easy access to the higher elevations where the marmots lived. They also noticed that golden eagles were hunting high elevation clearcuts; something they had been unable to do at any other time in history.

Counts done by Recovery Team field crews between 1994 and 1998 turned up only 71 to 103 animals in the areas where there had been over 200 less than a decade before. The Recovery Team soon realized that the population of Vancouver Island marmots had become so small and widely-scattered, they simply could not find mates. The Team concluded that without active human intervention (captive breeding followed by reintroduction back into the wild), the species would become extinct. There was virtually no possibility that Vancouver Island marmots would recover on their own.

Scientists in Russia and France provided the Recovery Team with some important and useful guidance. They had worked with the marmot species found in their parts of the world; breeding them in captivity and releasing them back into their local mountains.

The Vancouver Island marmot captive breeding programme was started in 1997 and, in 1998, the Marmot Recovery Foundation (MRF), a registered charity, was formed to solicit funds, increase public awareness, and run the day-to-day business of the recovery project. 1998 was also the year that the population of Vancouver Island marmots plummeted to an all-time low of about 75 individuals.

Since then, thanks to the success of the captive breeding programme, the numbers have slowly increased. At the time of writing (early September 2004), there are 93 Vancouver Island marmots in four captive breeding facilities and roughly 35 living in the wild. The breeding facilities are found in the Toronto Zoo, the Calgary Zoo, the Mountain View Conservation and Breeding Centre in Langley, BC and at the MRF-funded Tony Barrett Mt Washington Marmot Recovery Centre on Vancouver Island. This healthy, growing captive population is robust enough to provide animals for annual releases back to the wild. The ultimate goal is to restore a sustainable population of 400-600 Vancouver Island marmots in the wild, so there’s still much to be done.

None of this painstaking recovery work would be possible without the help of the government of British Columbia, forestry and other industries, non-government organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, and the general public. The Marmot Recovery Foundation now has the support of over 10,000 individuals. You can help too. You may want to buy a cuddly plush marmot, join the fun of the adoption club, or simply make a one-time donation. Find out how to do that, and learn more about Canada’s most endearing and endangered animal, by linking to the Marmot Recovery Foundation website, www.marmots.org

northStudio.com, Inc. is headquartered in Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Accordingly, we have chosen to raise awareness to the survival of one of our own dear creatures.

Our www.LodgingChannel.com accommodation search engine powers some 400+ geographically specific accommodation search engine directories which are seen and utilized around the world.

Hoel Ibardolaza, our senior graphic artist, developed the cartoon character of our "InnKeeper" marmot in February 2003. Hoel has since drawn the marmot in an original scene for each and every bed and breakfast as well as each vacation rental directory - over 400 sites - which is part of the LodgingChannel.com family. In May 2003, Hoel introduced "Mrs." Marmot and Jr. in www.BedandBreakfastOntario.ca

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