Latest scale aims to weigh if chubby endangered B.C. marmots have more babies

Weighing chubby marmots

Photo: The Canadian Press

An endangered marmot sits on an outdoor scale on Vancouver Island in a handout photo. The equipment is part of research aimed to study whether larger and heavier animals have more babies. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Wilder Institute

Vancouver Island marmots can be a little shy when it comes to revealing their weight.

Technicians and researchers with Vancouver Island University and the Wilder Institute are ready to deploy their latest version of an outdoor scale this summer to assess the health of the critically endangered species and determine if larger marmots have more babies.

The scale is about the size of a laptop case and needs to be rugged enough to survive in the outdoors but not feel foreign to the house-cat-sized marmots so they are comfortable standing on it.

Mike Lester, a technician in the faculty of science and technology at Vancouver Island University, says the latest scale has a plywood surface and is the first with technology that will read a chip implanted in each marmot to identify them.

The work is part of a study looking into the benefits of providing a wild marmot with calorie-dense biscuits near their wintering shelter to see if extra food boosts their body weight as well as their reproduction.

The population of Vancouver Island marmots once dipped as low as 30 but has rebounded to at least 300 individuals in the last two decades.

Lester says marmots have been on the island since the last ice age, but their numbers went into a steep decline for many reasons, including climate change.

"Bringing that back is important, because they're part of the ecosystem in the alpine here. It's almost like a keystone species, because they turn over the soil, they provide habitat for other animals. They provide prey, secondary prey species, for things like cougars and eagles," he said.

"They're an integral part of it, and we've been the cause of their decline. So, I think it's important that we try to recover that species and try and undo the harms that we've done."