‘Extremely rare’ creature spotted by Canadian photographer. ‘Once in a lifetime’

Gordon Cooke, a wildlife photographer in Canada, took his camera out to capture some osprey recently in Calgary, Alberta, when he noticed something unusual.

“I couldn’t quite make out what it was until it finally got out in the open,” Cooke told McClatchy News.

When Cook realized what he was looking at, he immediately started taking photos. He was in the presence of a wolverine.

“There was no time to recheck the camera settings, so I was praying the whole time that the settings were good and the pictures would come out,” he said.

Cooke snapped several pictures of the critter as it perched itself on a wooden log.

“I was very fortunate that the wolverine posed nicely for me before disappearing and that the settings were fine for that animal and the lighting situation,” Cooke said.

“Yes, this happened. Once in a lifetime for me,” he said in a tweet. “I never expected to see or photograph one in Calgary.”

Wolverines were once common in southern Canada, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. However, over harvesting and habitat loss have led to significant declines in the population, making the critters a rare sight.

The species is slow to reproduce and requires a large territory, so it has struggled to withstand environmental changes, the society said.

“They are extremely rare. They take a very long time to breed,” Aerin Jacob, director of science and research at the Nature Conservancy of Canada, told CFCN. “And so we need to do everything in our power to make sure that Wolverine is able to get to a safe place.”

Experts think the wolverine is likely a young male that just left his mother, Jacob told CFCN.

“It’s doing what any young animal does, you know, it’s striking out on its own looking for food, looking for mates, looking for a territory,” Jacob said, according to the outlet.

Other scientists and naturalists were excited by Cooke’s sighting, too.

“It’s a superhero of the wilderness,” Chris Fisher, an Alberta naturalist, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “Quite frankly, you just don’t see them anywhere, never mind a major metropolitan city like Calgary.”

“What an incredible experience,” one person said in response to Cooke’s tweet. “Never in a million years would I expect to see one in Calgary. So wild!”

“Insane,” another person tweeted. “What a treat, extra special.”

Calgary is about 80 miles east of Banff National Park.

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