{"id":169319,"date":"2026-08-15T17:47:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T17:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/169319\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T17:47:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T17:47:17","slug":"stunning-video-shows-vancouver-island-marmots-in-mountain-alpine-after-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/169319\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning video shows Vancouver Island marmots in mountain alpine after release"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Video taken high in the alpine of the Haley Lake Ecological Reserve north of Cowichan Lake and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/MarmotRecovery\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/MarmotRecovery\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">posted this week by the Marmot Recovery Foundation<\/a> shows the first few moments after three endangered Vancouver Island Marmots were released into the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see the viewscapes from their mountain homes,\u201d said Adam Taylor, Marmot Recovery Foundation executive director. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou release it into the wild and within half an hour they\u2019re coming out, they\u2019re exploring, you know you can watch them in the video sampling wild grasses like right away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watch the report below:<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The release in the video happened in early July.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fifty-three marmots have been released this year including the final two on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ongoing effort to reintroduce the marmots to Vancouver Island using a captive breeding program began two decades ago when less than 30 marmots were left. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey were pretty close to extinction and the real belief was the wild population was probably destined for extinction,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now there are 420 Vancouver Island Marmots.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s a pretty dramatic increase but (they\u2019re) still profoundly at risk. You know if we discovered a species where there are only 420 individuals we\u2019d be launching a recovery effort,\u201d Taylor said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The marmot recovery is happening, but happening slowly. Only about 20 per cent of the animals released every year will survive as they face a changing habitat due to climate change and predation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe unfortunate reality for any small mammal species is that predation in particular is a driving factor in their lives and a lot of them will be eaten by predators,\u201d added Taylor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Vancouver Island marmots used to occupy territory from Nimpkish Lake to Cowichan Lake, but now there are only two colonies in the Strathcona Park-Mount Washington area and Nanaimo Lakes south.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are encouraging signs, however.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019re seeing the marmot population not just thrive with the marmots that we\u2019re releasing, but beginning to grow and expand and re-occupy some of their historic sites on their own and that, I mean that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been working on for 20 years,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The rest of the year will be spent on trips into the field to monitor this year\u2019s releases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Video taken high in the alpine of the Haley Lake Ecological Reserve north of Cowichan Lake and posted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[54162,54163,95,54164,784],"class_list":["post-169319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-haley-lake-ecological-reserve","tag-marmot-recovery-foundation","tag-vancouver","tag-vancouver-island-marmot","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}