Species: Gulo gulo

H - >2,500,000 square km (greater than 1,000,000 square miles) - H - Holarctic; northern Europe, northern Asia, and northern North America (Pasitschniak-Arts and Lariviere 1995, Aubry et al. 2007). The species occupies a wide elevational range; for example, in California, wolverines have been recorded at elevations of 400 to 4,300 meters (average 2425 m) (California DF&G 1990, Wilson 1982).<br><br>Historical range in North America: arctic islands to the mountains of California, Colorado, and Utah (Predator Conservation Alliance 2001), and parts of the northcentral and northeastern U.S. (where records are sketchy and scarce). Presently extirpated from most of the southern part of the range, including all of the northcentral and northeastern U.S. and most of southeastern and south-central Canada. <br><br>In Canada, the wolverine retains its original distribution in the arctic region and in the western mountain and boreal regions but has disappeared from the prairies and from areas south of the boreal forest in eastern Canada; within the boreal region a large gap distributional has developed southeast of Hudson Bay (Dauphine, 1989 COSEWIC report). There have been no verified reports of wolverines in Quebec since 1978, or in Labrador since 1950, but there are unconfirmed reports almost every year (Environment Canada, Species at Risk website). <br><br>Recent surveys in the contiguous United States indicate that wolverines appear to occupy (and are essentially limited to) the montane regions of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington (Copeland 1996; Washington Department of Wildlife 1998; Inman et al. 2002; Giddings, pers. comm., 2003 cited by USFWS 2003; Squires, pers. comm., 2003, cited by USFWS 2003). Until recently, there had been no confirmed records of wolverine in California since 1922 (Grinnell et al. 1937); attempts to locate wolverines by means of photographic bait stations during the winters of 1991-1992 and 1992-1993 yielded no records (Barrett et al. 1994). In 2008-2010, a single male wolverine was photographed by camera traps in the central Sierra Nevada of California. However, genetic data indicate that this male is related to wolverines in the northern Rocky Mountains and not a remnant of the native California population. See Predator Conservation Alliance (2001) and Wilson (1982) for a state-by-state review of occurrence in the contiguous United States. <br><br>Data on the distribution in Eurasia are sketchy. The range in Scandinavia appears to be concentrated in the mountainous central and northern portions of Norway and Sweden, as well as in Finland (Kvam et al. 1988; Nyholm 1993 and Andersson 1995, cited by Blomqvist 1995). Wolverines also occupy the taiga and northern coniferous forest of the former Soviet Union (M. S. Blinnikov, pers. comm.). [from Petersen 1997]