A dollop of peanut butter served on a bed of rocks is part of the plan to remove a wayward marmot living on the grounds of the ritzy Fairmont Empress Hotel.
Empress staff has been instructed to slather peanut butter on rocks near the marmot's home to give it a taste for the spread, which will later be used by Environment officials to live-trap the critter and send it home, said Michael Yarr, hotel comptroller and chairman of its green committee.
Skippy Super Chunk is the variety of peanut butter most critters prefer, said Ministry of the Environment wildlife biologist Don Doyle, who plans to come down from Nanaimo in "a couple of weeks" to trap the marmot and return it to its natural environment.
The yellow-bellied rodent first appeared at the Empress a year ago, to the dismay of both hotel staff and Environment Ministry officials, since it's not indigenous to the Island.
The population is spread widely spread across sa国际传媒, from the Okanagan Valley to the Cariboo-Chilcotin. The animals are also found in Alberta and the northwestern United States.
Early speculation was that the marmot hitched a ride from Grand Forks in the West Kootenay region.
That initiated a campaign involving the town's mayor and a Facebook page, called Roger Marmot, to bring the marmot back to Grand Forks.
Malcolm McAdie, captive-breeding specialist for the Marmot Recovery Foundation on Vancouver Island, said it's impossible to pinpoint where the marmot is from. "It's really just speculation where this guy originated," McAdie said. "I would say the odds are it is from somewhere in sa国际传媒"
Either way, the marmot is not part of the Island marmot clan, which is just starting to recover from near extinction.
"If a few yellow-bellied marmots established here, we could have a colony very quickly, which is something we don't want," McAdie said.
sa国际传媒 Environment Minister Barry Penner, who has already paid the marmot a personal visit, is concerned about the possibility the yellow-bellied marmot might bring with it a disease that could hurt the endangered Island marmots.
But the problem remains of catching the marmot, which was too skittish to trap last year. The Environment Ministry is set to try again once the marmot is accustomed to the taste of the bait, said Doyle.
"We almost got him last year [using peanut butter] but there was so much activity around the Empress he got scared off," Doyle said.
Marmots are social creatures and already Roger the marmot -- named after former hotel general manager Roger Soane -- has bonded with a James Bay couple and will eat out of their hands.
"The problem is that this marmot [if it stays] is never going to be interacting with any other marmots and that interaction is an important part of the life cycle -- to mate and to socialize," McAdie said.
The marmot will be trapped, kept in a covered cage and brought to Nanaimo to be examined by McAdie, a veterinarian. The animal will then be transported to the Lower Mainland, where several towns may vie for it. "We don't really care where he goes as long as he goes to his natural habitat, which is not Vancouver Island," Doyle said.
