Many years ago when I was hiking alone in a rural area NE of San Diego I came across the (then) extinct black-footed ferret. He sat up on his haunches, took one startled look at me, and promptly fell over in a dead faint. Or so I thought. After playing possum for 10-15 seconds he sprang to his feet and bolted for the cover of sage brush in the blink of an eye. Years later, the black-footed ferret was taken off the extinct list because someone’s dog carried home a dead one.
Four or five years ago, a friend of mine was out snow-shoeing in a very remote part of Northern Idaho when he ran across a wolverine - an endangered species whose movements and locations are meticulously documented and closely monitored. There isn’t supposed to be a single wolverine where my friend was, yet there it was.
I'm ranch raised. The summer range was in the northern sierra nevada/cascade mountains. We had wolverines there up to about up to about 20 years ago. They were few and far between but there are both badgers and wolverines up in that high country.