A rare Vancouver Island marmot was spotted and trapped in Port Alberni, the first time one has been captured here, one official said.

A marmot was spotted in a gravel pit in the Valley on June 22, said Victoria Jackson, executive director of the Marmot Recovery Foundation in Nanaimo.

“A Valley resident took pictures of it and reported it – actually a few people saw and reported it,” she said. “We could see in the pictures that it was a two year old female and that it had an ear tag, so we knew it was one of ours.”

The foundation runs a recovery and breeding program, with tagging and inventorying being part of it, Jackson said.

The animal likely wandered from Mount McQuillan, which is 21 kilometres south of the Valley.

“They mostly live in little pockets of habitat at higher levels,” Jackson said.

“But they wander looking for habitat, other colonies and other marmots to mate with.”

Port doesn’t provide suitable habitat for the animals to live though, said Malcolm McAdie, the foundation’s captive breeding specialist.

“There are rocks, soil and vegetation, so it would be OK in the short term,” McAdie said. “But there’s humans, predators like dogs, cars, and there’s no other marmots either.”

Once the marmot was identified, a ground crew was sent out to trap the animal, and they employed further technology to identify it, McAdie said.

“Our marmots have a transmitter surgically implanted in them as well as the ear tag,” he said. “The crew checked the frequency and sure enough it was a Maggie (female marmot).”

An ingenious bait was used to lure the animal - peanut butter. “The crew spread some in the trap, and once the marmot stepped in and on a plate the door shut,” McAdie said. “They really like the stuff.”

The animal was taken to Mount Hooper on June 27, and released with a male that was found in Nanoose Bay.

The capture of a marmot in Port Alberni is significant, McAdie said.

“To my knowledge, there has never been one found in the vicinity of Port Alberni,” he said. “It’s a very rare event.”

The foundation’s efforts are undertaken to replenish the Island’s beleaguered Marmot population.

Pups are still emerging from their burrows, and a census is still being taken, McAdie said. However, there are approximately 130-150 marmots on the Island today. That’s significant, he said, when you consider there were fewer than 30 in 2003.

The foundation’s goal is a self sustaining marmot population, and they are part way towards meeting it, Jackson said.

“Our recovery goal is 600, and we hope to have 200 of that by the end of the year,” she said.

The Marmot Recovery Foundation was founded in 1998, and is underwritten with a combination of provincial, corporate and private funding.