Asia Ecology / Distribution
Asia
China
In China, the wolverine occurs at the extreme southern edge of its global range, making its populations especially vulnerable to climate change. The animal is restricted to remote, cold northern and northwestern mountain systems. Wolverines in China are considered rare with populations that are very small and fragmented, and declining in some parts of the country. Most estimates suggest fewer than a few hundred individuals in total.
China likely supports only a tiny fraction of the global population of wolverines. In terms of their distribution across China, wolverines occur in northeastern and northwestern China. In the northeast of the country, wolverines exist in the Greater Khingan (Daxing’anling) Mountains, Heilongjiang Province, and near the Russian border, where they are connected to larger populations in Siberia. In northwestern China, wolverines can be found in the Altai Mountains bordering Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Wolverines are largely absent from central China and no longer occur in much of their historic southern range.
In China, wolverines occupy boreal (or taiga) forests, subalpine and alpine tundra, cold montane forests, high-elevation shrublands, and snow-dominated winter landscapes. Their primary food sources in China include the carrion of musk deer, roe deer, red deer and wild boar.
Mongolia
Wolverines in Mongolia tend to inhabit high mountain habitats, taiga and boreal forests, and montane tundra and boulder fields at higher elevations. Unlike Europe and North America where population surveys are more actively conducted, Mongolia lacks published, quantitative estimates of wolverine numbers. Unpublished surveys confirm the presence of wolverines in several regions, but no scientifically rigorous density or population size estimates have been established.
Wolverines in Mongolia occur primarily in remote, cold, mountainous and boreal regions, especially along borders with Russia and China. This includes the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia (a core habitat area along the Russian and Chinese borders), northern Hovsgol and Khentii mountain regions (along the Russian border), and the northern taiga and forested slopes in the Hangai and other high mountain ranges. These areas are not connected to each other which reduces any meaningful connection between these subpopulations.
As opportunistic carnivores and scavengers, the wolverine’s diet in Mongolia includes the carrion of large ungulates such as argali sheep, Siberian ibex, roe deer, and small mammals — but specific diet studies in Mongolia are still scarce. They also feed on small mammals such as marmots, hares, and rodents, as well as birds, eggs, and occasionally plant material such as berries in summer.