By Stacey Tucker (Contact / Staff Bio)
May 28, 2008 - 12:01 a.m. EST

UBLY -- The only wolverine to grace the Thumb of Michigan is trying her hardest not to encounter people.

Jeff Ford, a teacher at Deckerville High School, has been keeping the wolverine under a watchful eye for the past few years - through the lens of a game camera.

“One of the most amazing feats of her travels during the last four years is her ability to not be seen by humans in an area where the human population is high,” Ford said. “I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the areas she calls home over those years and have only seen her once in the flesh for a fleeting second.”

Once, Ford said he even tried setting up his video camera in the brush to get some footage on location with no luck.

“I believe it circled downwind of me, then left,” Ford said.

Thanks to the game cameras, he is able to track the wolverine and Ford said he knows of a similar situation in California.

In February 2008, a graduate student from Oregon State University was conducting field research in California on martens, a smaller member of the weasel family, when she found something interesting on her game camera - a wolverine.

“The discovery of the rarest and most solitary mammal in North America in California started me thinking of the possibility of a wolverine population in Michigan,” Ford said.

One possibility that was running in Ford’s head was whether or not the Michigan wolverine was born in the wild, in Michigan.

Ford said even though he feels the most probable way the wolverine arrived in the Thumb is by an ice bridge from Ontario during the 30-42 day period of ice-over when the Upper and Lower Peninsulas connect, he believes there is a possibility there could be a population of wolverines in Michigan that have remained concealed because of their solitary lifestyle.

If anyone happens to see an abnormally large track that has five toes, Ford said they should document the discovery by making casts and taking pictures.

He said although a wolverine has a print similar in dimensions to that of a young black bear, a bear’s toes are all out in front of the pad, where the wolverine’s toes have three out front and one on each side, one being larger than the other, similar to the thumb and pinky of a human.

Ford said if people are able to establish that a wolverine population does exist in Michigan, and the wolverine is listed as endangered, not just protected, the DNR would be forced to not only protect but also propagate the species under the Michigan endangered species act.

“Let’s get out there and find another wolverine,” Ford said.

If anyone sees a print similar to a wolverine, contact Ford through his Web site at www.wolverineguy.com or by his e-mail, jeff@wolverineguy.com.

Stacey Tucker is a staff writer for the Tuscola County Advertiser. She can be reached at tucker@tcadvertiser.com.