One of the rarest mammals in the world was almost wiped out two decades ago, sparking an elaborate and costly recovery program that has boosted numbers and offers hope for other at-risk species.

Read an excerpt from the story in The Narwhal:

The best way to trap a Vancouver Island marmot is with peanut butter — and not the healthy kind. Marmots use beaver-like incisors to chow down on an alpine meadow buffet of more than 40 species of grasses, herbs and wildflowers. The starfish leaves of alpine lupins are a favourite dish. But place a teaspoon of peanut butter, preferably containing sugar and hydrogenated fats, near a marmot that is fattening up after six or seven months of hibernation and it will quickly eschew the salad bar.

For wildlife veterinarian Malcolm McAdie, feeding dozens of captive marmots at the Tony Barrett Mount Washington Marmot Recovery Centre, where marmots are bred and released into the wild, is a daily preoccupation. One entire room at the centre is devoted to food preparation. The marmot youngsters, McAdie jokes, are “eating us out of house and home.”

The Vancouver Island marmot, Canada’s most endangered mammal, is only found in the wild on Vancouver Island mountains. The heaviest member of the squirrel family, marmots are about the size of a large house cat, have dainty ears like their chipmunk cousins and sport chocolate-brown fur with splashes of cream. Like other marmot species, Vancouver Island marmots are highly social; they live in colonies, rub noses in greeting and play fight like boxers.

Read the full story in The Narwhal

Photo by Adam Taylor, Marmot Recovery Foundation