Facing what many wildlife experts thought was sure extinction in the early 1900s, due to hunting, trapping and poisoning, the North American wolverine recovered so well, it's been rejected as a threatened species.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced it's withdrawing a proposal to list the wolverine in the contiguous United States as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the giant weasel has regained its ecological foothold over the past half century.

So, while it remains evident the wolverine is losing its frigid natural habitat through climatic warming, "the Service ... after carefully considering the best available science ... has determined that the effects of climate change are not likely to place the wolverine in danger of extinction now or in the foreseeable future," said an agency news release. "As a result, the wolverine does not meet the statutory definition of either a 'threatened species' or an 'endangered species' and does not warrant protection under the ESA."

Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe indicated his decision to withdraw the listing proposal was based on a consensus recommendation of the agency's directors for the regions encompassing the wolverine's known range, which includes the Mountain Prairie, Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest regions.

"Climate change is a reality, the consequences of which the Service deals with on a daily basis. While impacts to many species are clear and measurable, for others the consequences of a warming planet are less certain. This is particularly true in the Mountain West, where differences in elevation and topography make fine-scale prediction of climate impacts ambiguous," Ashe said in the release. "In this case, based on all the information available, we simply do not know enough about the ecology of the wolverine and when or how it will be affected by a changing climate to conclude at this time that it is likely to be in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future."

Fish and Wildlife initially proposed to list the wolverine as threatened, based on climate-change-model forecasts that showed overall loss of spring snow across the range of the species.

But, after a more thorough review, augmented with additional information, the agency determined the climate change models in question were unable to reliably predict snowfall amounts and snow-cover persistence in locations of wolverine dens.

It was also observed wolverine populations actually grew and expanded in the second half of the last century and may, according to revised behavioral predictions, continue to expand into suitable, unoccupied habitat.

But, "while we concluded that the wolverine does not merit Endangered Species Act protection at this time, this does not end our involvement in wolverine conservation," said Ashe. "We will continue to work with our state partners as they manage for healthy and secure wolverine populations and monitor their status. If new information emerges that suggests we should take another look at listing, we will not hesitate to do that."