Tina and Milo, the ermine and stoat mascots of this year’s Olympic Games in Italy, are already everywhere — smiling on stuffed animals, posters, mugs and T-shirts.
However, it is another story for their real-life counterparts — living out of sight and under pressure in the Alps as their snow cover slowly melts away due to climate change.
Ermines and stoats are the same animal, but with the ermine sporting its white winter coat and the stoat its brown one for summer. While they might be the face of the Olympics, they are disappearing in Italy’s Alps, according to the country’s only dedicated ermine researcher.
Photo: AF
Since 2022, University of Turin doctoral student Marco Granata has been single-handedly monitoring the sinewy, hard-to-spot mammals who inhabit the same mountain peaks where the games would take place, high in the snowy Alps where their winter coats camouflage them from predators.
“The ermine is like a wild ghost. It’s a small, elusive animal,” Granata said. “What makes it so interesting to me is the fact that it risks disappearing from entire mountains.”
The small mammal’s ability to molt — its brown coat turning to white in November — is what Granata calls a “super power” that has allowed it to survive for thousands of years.
Now, it is a liability.
“The ermine faces a mismatch when it finds itself completely white in a world that should be white, but is no longer so,” Granata said.
Snow cover in the Italian Alps has decreased by half in the past 100 years, a study published in December 2024 showed.
With their camouflage gone, the white ermines now stand out starkly against their mountain backdrop, becoming easy targets for predators such as hawks, owls or foxes.
Another problem awaits when the energetic carnivores climb to higher altitudes in search of snow — a lack of prey.
While ermines are compelled to ascend, the snow voles and mice they depend upon for food have no need to do so.
Ski slopes also encroach on ermine habitat because of “competition for the areas where it snows the most,” Granata said.
His research predicts ermine habitat in the Alps would decrease by 40 percent by 2100, with ermines forced to climb by an average of 200m and the voles staying put. There is little fuss made in Italy over ermines, which were once heavily hunted for their white pelts to adorn royal ceremonial robes.
Scientists have paid them scant attention in recent decades, given the difficulty of gathering data on the fast-moving creatures.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature last classified the ermine in 2015 as of “least concern” on a list of potentially threatened species.
That influential list is out of date, said Granata, who hopes his research would lead to their protection.
“The fact that a doctoral student is the expert on a species shows how little attention has actually been paid to this species,” he said.
Every fall, Granata hikes the Alps, placing camera traps — plastic boxes with a motion-triggered camera inside — that help him analyze the animal’s seasonal patterns.
“You have to think like an ermine,” he said, placing the box in areas where the curious mammal might go to find food.
When the snow melts, Granata collects the data from inside the boxes and watches a season’s worth of videos and photos.
“It’s like unwrapping a gift because you don’t know what’s inside... you actually see this invisible world,” he said.
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