MARMOT’S TALE
Aa endangered Vancouver Island Marmot has been captured in the Alberni Valley after residents spotted it at a nursery on Ship Creek Road.
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Updated: July 10, 2009 5:44 AM
A rare Vancouver Island marmot was recently trapped in Port Alberni, and it’s the first time one has been captured here, one official said.
Local residents Janine and Jerry Linning were hiking near Earth Land and Sea on Ship Creek Road on June 22, when they saw something they hadn’t encountered outdoors before.
“I saw what I thought was a marmot, and it seemed as curious about us as we were it,” Janine Linning said.
“I said to my husband “that’s a marmot,” but he said “there’s no marmot in Port Alberni,” she said.
Janine snapped pictures of the animal before it scurried into its burrow, and downloaded them at home.
“I didn’t notice it until I developed the pictures, but it had an ear tag,” she said.
Suspecting the animal was endangered, Linning Google’d marmots and organizations, and came up with the Marmot Recovery Foundation in Nanaimo.
“I called them to report it because I didn’t think it would live long where it is with all those trucks around,” she said.
Linning was one of several Valley residents who spotted the marmot, but she was the only one who took pictures, said Victoria Jackson, executive director of the Marmot Recovery Foundation in Nanaimo.
“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,” Jackson said.
The foundation runs a recovery and breeding program for the Vancouver Island Marmot, with tagging and inventorying being part of it, she 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 Alberni 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 Maggie (a female marmot).”
An ingenious bait was used to lure the animal — peanut butter.
“They really like the stuff,” McAdie said.
“The crew spread some in the trap, and once the marmot stepped in and on a plate the door shut.” 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 of the endangered Vancouver Island Marmots on the Island today. That’s notable, he said, because 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.
reporter@albernivalleynews.com
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