Wolverines were trapped, poisoned and hunted out of existence in the lower 48 states decades ago, and now that they've begun to regain the thinnest of footholds in this country, they face an even greater challenge: climate change. Federal wildlife officials believe the species deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, but with this caveat: Wolverines are going to have to get in line. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday assigned wolverines a "warranted but precluded" status under the ESA, which means the species warrants protection but the service is "precluded by the need to address other higher priority species."
Those "higher priority" species include some of the 251 other species that were already official "candidates" for ESA protection. They range from the Arizona treefrog, Yosemite toad and Tucson shovel-nosed snake to the Lanai tree snail, the Mardon Skipper butterfly and rare plants like the Florida prairie-clover.
When there's not a single wolverine left in the Wolverine State then I'd say you're pretty much fucked as a species. But having to stand in line behind the Lanai tree snail and the Mardon Skipper butterfly is complete bullshit. It's kinda like being worse than MSU and PSU at football.
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