Marmots

There are 14 species of marmots worldwide (genus Marmota ) of stout-bodied, diurnal, terrestrial found in North America, Europe, and Asia. Marmots are 12–24 in. long upright and emit a whistling alarm call. People who study woodchucks and other marmots are called “marmoteers” or “marmotologists”. There is a big international meeting of marmotologists every three of years.

If history has proven anything about the marmot’s star qualities, it’s that it isn’t the type to give up without a fight—after all, it has thousands of years of survival under its belt already, much of it through dramatic geologic and climatic change. When scientists began intensely studying the animal in the 1970s, they discovered Marmota vancouverensis—with its unique chestnut and white coloring—to be distinct from the 14 other nonthreatened marmot species. It was separated from its closest cousins—the hoary and Olympic marmots—when an ice bridge that linked Vancouver Island with Canada’s mainland melted about 10,000 years ago. Over time this marmot has survived periods of cold so intense that much of the land was encased in ice, driving other island animals, such as mountain goats, to extinction.

The Vancouver Island marmot is found only on Vancouver Island, just off the coast of B.C. (a Canadian province). They can be found on the edges of mountain meadows, rocky slopes, logged sites, and thick clumps of alder trees. Boulders play an integral role in their habitat as they provide lookout towers for predators as well as control the marmot’s internal body temperature. As of 1972, Vancouver Island marmots inhabited 15 mountains, but today inhabit fewer. The reason for this is unknown, as the abandoned mountains still seem to be habitable for marmots.

There are three kinds of marmot in Alaska. The cat-size hoary marmot and the Alaska marmot weigh about ten pounds, and the smaller woodchuck is about half that size. The hoary marmot is most familiar - it lives in rocky talus slopes in the mountains of central, southwest and southeast Alaska, where it can be found right down to sea level. The darker Alaska marmot lives further north, on rocky slopes throughout much of the Brooks Range.

While marmots often are an important source of summer food for foxes, coyotes, wolves, bears, snow leopards, and eagles, marmots themselves, prefer vegetables. Marmots are 99% vegetarian; they have food preferences and some species and individuals prefer certain types of vegetation. They may eat the occasional insect or the occasional piece of road kill.

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