Hiking across Vancouver Island’s Mount Washington, marmot keeper Jordyn Alger is perplexed. “I’ve never not seen a marmot on a walk here before,” she says. Despite her radio-tracking equipment, she’s come up short this hot July afternoon. But as Alger speaks, as if to reward her optimism, a tagged wild marmot appears on a log, eyeing us.
The consistency of her sightings reveals an exceptionally effective program of rehabilitation, bringing critically endangered Vancouver Island marmots (Marmota vancouverensis) back from near extinction.
The species is distinguished from the other five North American marmot species — and 14 more worldwide — by its dark brown fur. Landscape changes, often linked to trees encroaching on their preferred open spaces, on Vancouver Island throughout the 20th century fragmented the marmots’ mountain habitat, leaving populations isolated. By 2003, there were fewer than 30 left in the wild, and they were so sparsely distributed that many ...
