Father and daughter spot rare, elusive wolverine: ‘The unicorn of Yellowstone’

Biologists say there are only six to seven wolverines in park, and sightings are few and far between

A nine-year-old and her father had a rare encounter with a wolverine at the Yellowstone National Park over the weekend.

Carl Kemp and his daughter Maya were touring America’s oldest national park on Saturday when they caught the animal on camera in the middle of a road near Soda Butte Creek.

“It was really magical to see and dad said it was like the unicorn of Yellowstone,” Maya told KTVQ.

“We were riding that high all the way for the rest of the trip. We didn’t want the trip to end, but we couldn’t wait for the trip to end to tell everyone about it,” said Mr Kemp.

According to biologists, there are only about six to seven wolverines in the 3,500 square-mile park and sightings of these elusive animals are extremely rare. Wolverines are the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae (weasels) and are considered extremely secretive.

“It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more closely resembling a small bear than other mustelids. The wolverine has a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times its size,” according to the Yellowstone National Park.

Otherwise, not much is known about the population of these animals in the park. Only one photograph of the animal has been taken in Yellowstone, and that was decades ago. Recently in January 2021, a trail camera reportedly captured a video of the animal in the park.

MacNeil Lyons, the guide accompanying the Kemps, said that before this he had only seen a wolverine in Yellowstone once, through binoculars and from more than a mile away.

“I’ve been wondering what’s next because this is kind of like the top animal to see in Yellowstone National Park. That’s why I’m still kind of in awe. I don’t know what to say about it. It was truly one of those magical moments. I don’t know how to describe it. We were both speechless at the time," Mr Lyons said.

He shared several photographs of the wolverine on the Facebook page of his tour agency describing how elated he was over this chance encounter.

“My guest said out loud, exactly what I was thinking, 'Is that a bear?'... For a hot second, we both thought that it might be a young black bear moving away from us, but as it turned and looked over its right shoulder towards us there was no mistaking that the animal was indeed a wolverine," he wrote.

Mr Lyons said they were able to spend three minutes in the presence of the unique animal, while it tried to move to the other side of the road.

“I’ve been to Yellowstone for over 20 years and have never seen one! Unless I mistook it for a badger,” one user, Suzie Simoneit, said in the comments.