ARTICLES

New England's Moose

The resurgence of moose in New England is a cause for both celebration

and concern........By Gretel H. Schueller

It's moose rutting time: The social season from mid-September to mid-October when love and the intensely musky, barnyard smell of urine are in the air. Seventeen of us have gathered on this October morning at a protected area of forest, swamp and meadow on the western flank of Vermont's Green Mountains, hoping for a Bullwinkle moment.

A heavy frost has the grass sparkling in the angled sun. "All right folks, let's make a circle," says Sue Morse, a 57-year old wildlife ecologist who heads Keeping Track, a nonprofit group that teaches people how to discover and track signs of wildlife in their communities. Morse briefs us on our plan for the day, and we set off down the trail in a single file.

Just a few decades ago, virtually the only place east of the Mississippi one could hope to catch sight of the antediluvian-appearing moose was in northern Maine. Today, yellow moose-crossing signs dot roadsides across New England, and towns hold moose festivals to lure wildlife-loving tourists. In fact, moose populations are so large in parts of the Northeast that collisions with cars are on the rise, confrontations in the suburbs are increasing and some areas are showing signs of overbrowsing. Morse worries that more trouble may be brewing.

"We've got about 50,000 moose in New England and New York," she says. "In the united States, that's a greater density per square mile than any other area, including Alaska."

When colonists first arrived in New England, the mammoth moose--standing as tall as six feet at the shoulder and weighing as much as 1500 pounds--outnumbered deer. But land clearing and unregulated hunting soon changed that. By the late 1800s, moose had disappeared from nearly all of the northeastern United States. Local names like Moose Pond and Moose Falls were the only reminders of days when moose had been plentiful. And seeing one was almost as rare as a unicorn sighting. Cedric Alexander, moose project leader with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, still vividly remembers his first sighting in 1979: a moose feeding from a pond in northeastern Vermont. "It was like seeing a Martian--it was a huge phenomenon."

Things began to slowly turn around for the moose in the late 1970s. Improved forestry practices, abandoned farms reverting to forest and the resurging beaver population (which led to moose-friendly ponds and bogs for feeding) all helped created prime moose habitat. Combined with several decades' worth of hunting bans, a moose revival began to spread across the Northeast--moving westward and southward from northern Maine's seed population. Now Maine has more than 30,000 moose; New Hampshire boasts 6500 and the unofficial "moose watching capital of the world" claim; and Vermont is home to more than 5000.

We hope to be treated with a glimpse of at least one of them. This moose outing, of course, is just another indication of the impressive return of the Northeast's largest native mammal. Across the region, moose safaris, moose-themed festivals--the Moosehead region of Maine, for instance, celebrates a month-long "Moosemania" festival--and moose-adorned stuff from mittens to mugs are all pumping big dollars into local economies. The No. 1 question posed by visitors to Maine is, perhaps not surprisingly, "Where can I see a moose?" according to the Maine Tourism Association.

It's the question on our minds as we set out. Within minutes, we discover our first moose mark. Voracious vegetarians, moose eat leaves, bark, moss aquatic plants, twigs and just about anything that grows, often dramatically changing the landscape. The product of all that dining are the piles of jumbo-olive-sized pellets we see in abundance along the trail. They're testimony to the 25 to 50 pounds of plant food per day a moose eats, depending on the season and the size of the moose.

We soon find the site of a recent moose buffet: the trunks of a beech tree and a striped maple almost completely denuded of bark. The moose had chomped the bark off the trees the way a person eats corn off the cob. With their sharp bottom incisors, moose chisel upward through smooth, young outer bark, exposing the sapwood within. Carbohydrate-rich bark is a typical autumn snack for moose. Their favorites are red maples, striped maples and mountain ash.

In moderation, barking does not harm the tree, but for the mountain ash, whose densities are lower than maples, this preference is killing off whole stands. "Where moose are concentrating in the winter this is becoming a problem," says Morse. "All of a sudden you can quantitatively appreciate, gee whiz, there are too many moose up here." This affects other creatures that also depend on these trees--notably black bears, for which the fruit is a valuable fall food source.

With no natural predators around-- Voracious eaters of tree bark (above) and

namely wolves and cougars--hunting other vegetation, moose alter habitat on

has become a crucial method to which other creatures depend.

manage moose: New Hampshire

issued nearly 700 permits this year; Maine gave out 2850. Vermont issued 1115 permits--a big jump from the 30 in 1993, when the state first launched the lottery.

"In some areas, the moose population is really getting out of hand," agrees Alexander. "Vermont's never seen moose densities like this. That's one of the reasons we have so many hunting permits issued now. Moose have the capacity to double their population every five years."

He says that landowners are complaining that moose are damaging the growth of saplings on their land. "There are so many moose and they consume so much, nothing's growing back." The changing forest could harm other woodland creatures. "We're concerned about the spruce grouse because that's a state endangered grouse species. They need young regenerating trees and live foliage close to the ground and in a lot of their range the moose have stripped all the live foliage." Other forest bird species may also be affected, suspects Alexander.

The rampant browsing isn't limited to just trees. Maine biologist Karen Morris found that moose are reducing the number of aquatic plants, such as water lilies and pondweed, in some northern Maine ponds. Although it's too early to quantify, Morris notes that "a lot of animals use those plants for cover."

Descending a ridge, we find fresh moose tracks spaced about five feet apart in the mud. They look a lot like giant cow hooves at four and a half inches wide. Bull moose tracks can be up to six inches wide. About an hour later, we see more fresh tracks. This time they are closer together, indicating more of an amble. "The moose probably heard us coming down the hill," says Morse.

She decides to try calling, and pulls out a large white bone and a green funnel from her pack. The bone is a moose shoulder blade, which she rubs against the branches and trunks of trees to mimic the sound of an antlered moose thrashing tree stems. Then she puts her mouth up to the horn. Out bellows a low-pitch grunting followed by a mournful mmmmah, mimicking the tremulous moaning calls of a cow seeking suitors. She calls intermittently for about five minutes. Unfortunately, there's no response.

We walk until we come to a small swamp. A few feet off the trail, Morse points out a moose bed, an area of matted grass the size of a kitchen table where a moose had taken a nap. Nearby is a moose rub, a young hemlock tree that was snapped off three quarters from the top by a moose; coarse brown moose hairs are caught in the broken tip. This really is moose country. Signs of the giant animal are all around us.

A little farther on we find a moose wallow. To the untrained eye, it looks like a shallow, muddy hole. However, it's the hot tub of the moose mating game. A bull moose will dig a pit in mud and urinate in it. Then, he splashes the mud and testosterone-rich urine into a soupy muck with which he perfumes himself. "Urine is to moose what Old Spice is to men," explains Morse. "They wear it to woo females." A Willing cow will find the scent sexy enough to rub against the bull and even drink his urine from the wallow, according to Morse.

All that mating means more moose. Vermont's moose population has increased so dramatically that many are spilling westward into northern New York. In 1980, you could count on one hand the total moose population in New York. Today there are between 300 and 400 moose in the Adirondacks alone, estimates Ed Reed, a wildlife biologist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Until recently, says Reed, "moose hadn't been a high priority. But we're going to need to start paying attention to them.

The population is going to grow exponentially in the next few years."

Moose represent a dilemma for wildlife management officials. The return of the moose is a testament to the health of the environment. On the other hand, moose that wander into populated areas or onto roads can create conflict. Reed is looking to his colleagues in the east, hoping to learn from their practices. For its part, Vermont is in the process of writing up a new 10-year management plan for moose. One of the major components is to gauge how many moose people want. "With white-tailed deer, Vermonters have always wanted as many as the habitat can support," explains Alexander. "With moose, however--because of the conflicts with farmers, sugar makers, motorists--people don't want the maximum number of moose the habitat can support."

The irony, of course, is that all these states continue to market the moose emblem on everything from ice cream to bed-and-breakfasts. The only real solution, believes Morse, is to encourage the return of the wolf, assist in the recovery of cougars, and conserve core and connective habitat for them. "Hunting isn't touching it. If management policies don't change, moose are going to trash their habitat; it will be a wasteland," she predicts. "It's going to take some different thinking to get us out of this mess."

As our moose tracking outing ends, we pack up. With 17 of us lumbering through the woods, however quietly and gingerly, the keen-eared moose kept their distance. But even without a moose sighting, we've all come away with a deeper appreciation for the gangly creature. "Many wildlife species have repopulated these areas with and without our help," concludes Morse. "But we need to do a lot of learning immediately to understand what we can expect."

Defenders of Wildlife Magazine Winter 2007 Edition