Baby boom! Vancouver Island marmots break records for 2024

Haley, a Vancouver Island marmot pup was one of the 108 marmots born in 2024. Photo courtesy of Adam Taylor / Marmot Recovery Foundation

A baby boom has taken over Mount Washington as the critically engaged species, the Vancouver Island Marmot, welcomed over 100 newly born pups.

As its name suggests the Vancouver Island marmot is found only on Vancouver Island, mainly on Mount Washington and in the Strathcona Park area. 20 years ago the species faced near extinction, with only 38 marmots left remaining in the wild.

Biologists like the late Dr. Andrew Bryant followed the severe decline in the marmot population and was one of the founders of the Marmot Recovery Foundation in 1999. The foundation has led the work to save this special species where now more than 300 marmots are accounted for.

In the beginning, the foundation built a facility at Mount Washington, where with support from the Calgary Zoo and Toronto Zoo, they bred and released the marmots. The foundation also works to restore habitat, supplement feeding of the marmots, and track the population and environmental threats it faces.

Adam Taylor is the executive director of the foundation and joined in the work to save the Vancouver Island marmots after years of working in animal conservation. He has worked with other endangered species such as slugs, snakes, bats, and owls. He admits that it wasn’t too hard to switch over to working with the marmots due to the animal’s overall cuteness.

But another thing that stood out to Taylor about the marmots was that while a lot of endangered species are going to need conservation efforts forever as their habitats disappear, there is still hope for saving the marmots.

“I really wanted to work on a species where I really felt like we could finish the job, so to speak–where we could actually recover a species,” Taylor said. “So when the marmot position came up, I knew about marmots, I sort of been keeping tabs on their recovery, as it was in my field, and I knew that this was a species that there really is hope for a real recovery.”

He said conservation work can be really bleak as many animals like the caribou drop drastically in population, but animals like the marmots show the importance of the work they do and keep the motivation going.

“So in Canada, there is literally one species in all of Canada where we can say conservation action has saved this species from extinction, and that's the marmot. That's it,” he said. “That's our one species that we can really be confident that conservation has prevented an extinction.”

Currently, the marmots are hibernating and won’t be awake until April or May of next year. The marmots hibernate for about five to six months every year.

Taylor admits that at the start of the 2024 season, he was worried that the low snow levels would affect the habit, but it ended up being a fantastic year for the species.

“I will admit, when the season started, snow levels were really low, and we were really concerned that we experienced a drought this summer,” he said. “But as we all experienced, in fact, we had a lot of rain this summer, and as much as that wasn't as much fun as we'd like for us, for the marmots, it was fantastic news because it meant that their meadows were green and lush, full of food, and they responded by having lots and lots and lots of babies.”

In 2024, 108 pups were born beating the last record of just under 80 born in one year.

While the overall population for the Vancouver Island Marmot for this year is not finalized yet, in 2023, 301 marmots were observed by the foundation–a steep increase from 204 marmots that were observed in 2022.

Taylor said they cannot predict what the population growth could look like for the marmot going ahead as drought and weather play a huge part in the marmot's lives. But next year they predict a decrease in the number of marmot pups being born, which Taylor said is not overly concerning news.

This is because as Taylor said marmots tend to only give birth every other year due to the strain of hibernation it puts on the female marmot bodies.

“So [marmots are] one of the few species that hibernate for longer than they're awake many years. To do that, they have to really increase their body condition going into hibernation–they have to get nice and chubby before they go into hibernation,” he said. “Then when they come out of hibernation, they probably lost 30 per cent or more of their body mass.”

This means only female marmots in good condition are able to breed, leaving the rest to wait until the next season.

As there seems to be hope for the Vancouver Island marmots, Taylor said there is still work that needs to be done to ensure the marmot population continues.

Taylor said donations to the Marmot Recovery Foundation make a difference in the work they are able to do as 75 per cent of the funding for their work comes from donations.

Along with just donating to the foundation directly, marmots can be “adopted” through its  Adopt-a-Marmot Club where one-time or monthly donations will get the donor a personalized marmot adoption certificate, a poster of a Vancouver Island marmot, and receive special recovery project newsletters and year-end reports about the “adopted” marmot. But all marmots adopted stay with their colony in the wild under the watch of the Marmot Recovery Foundation.

Taylor also said to keep an eye out for marmots and if one is seen, report it to the Marmot Recovery Foundation so they can observe the marmot and move it to a better location if needed.

“So a couple years ago, there was a farmer [that] phoned us from Errington and said, ‘I think I've got a Vancouver Island marmot in my field,’ which, I have to admit, it sounded unlikely,” he said. “But he sent photos, and there was a Vancouver Island marmot in his field. So we were able to go out, we were able to trap that marmot, translocate it to another colony, where we thought there was an appropriate potential mate, and sure enough, that marmot is still in Strathcona Park.”

Currently, the best location to see the Vancouver Island marmots is at the ski slopes on Mount Washington during the summertime where the largest colony of marmots is located.

Taylor asks if someone is going out to look for marmots to not bring any dogs as the marmots will view them as predators. As well, Taylor said, if a marmot stands up and starts to whistle or stops feeding then it's time to back up and give it a little bit of space.

The Vancouver Island marmot can be recognized by its chocolate brown fur with white patches on its nose, chin, forehead and chest.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.