Federal protection sought for Olympic Peninsula marmots

Environmentalists are suing the Trump administration to protect an animal found only on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula.

The Olympic marmot lives in mountain meadows of Olympic National Park.

A warming climate is reducing the marmots’ habitat and making it easier for hungry coyotes to prey upon the rare rodents.

The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in May 2024 to protect the housecat-sized rodent, known for its loud whistle, under the Endangered Species Act.

The agency is required to issue an initial determination on such petitions within 90 days. Within one year, it is required to make a final determination whether the species warrants federal protection.

An Olympic marmot whistles at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park on July 31, 2016, recorded by Jeff Rice for Montana State University's Acoustic Atlas.

The environmental advocates sued the wildlife service and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of the Interior, on Thursday for missing both deadlines.

Interior spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said in an email that the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation. She also declined to comment on the status of the marmot petition.

“We will respond to non-shutdown related queries once appropriations have been enacted,” Peace said.

Olympic National Park is currently home to an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 of the bushy-tailed meadow dwellers.

Despite annual surveys of Olympic marmots’ colonies, their population estimate is, like the animals themselves, quite fuzzy.

“I say you don't count marmots because you go to a colony and there's maybe 10 different holes,” said John Bridge, president of the nonprofit Olympic Park Advocates. He has been participating in citizen-scientist surveys of the parks’ marmots for 13 years and likens the process to the arcade game whack-a-mole.

"A marmot pops up here and then it goes down over there," he said. "Is that the same marmot that came up here?"

RELATED: How the Olympic marmot became Washington's fuzziest state symbol

According to the National Park Service, 90% of Olympic marmot habitat is protected within the park’s boundaries.

But park boundaries cannot protect habitats against the planet-heating effects of fossil-fuel pollution.

“When we have less and less snow pack, that means that trees start to creep up and take over the alpine meadows that the marmots need,” said John Bridge, president of the nonprofit Olympic Park Advocates.

“They need to have open spaces so that they can see predators that might be coming towards them,” Bridge said. “If there's more and more trees, coyotes get to sneak up on the marmots better.”

According to the National Park Service, Olympic marmot numbers declined in the 1990s and early 2000s, at least partly due to predation by coyotes.

Marmot populations have “possibly” stabilized since then, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Until about a century ago, wolves kept coyote populations in check on the Olympic Peninsula.

Wolves were exterminated from the peninsula by the 1930s. Not far from the Olympic Peninsula, wolves survive on Vancouver Island and in the Washington Cascades. But the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north and Interstate 5 to the east are thought to present impenetrable barriers for wildlife to cross to or from the peninsula.

The Washington State Department of Transportation is planning wildlife crossings for I-5 south of Olympia to restore connectivity between habitats east and west of Puget Sound.

Western North America is home to five species of marmots, including the yellow-bellied marmot in the Columbia River basin and the critically endangered Vancouver Island marmot, found only on British Columbia’s largest island.