Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 50% of Minnesota's Moose Calves Dead Within 7 Days

When MN closed their moose hunt, they decided to spend $2 million and five years to prove the obvious. If our medical doctors were like many game and fish biologists, they would have to go to 4 years of medical school and 3 years of specialty training before each surgery! Most patients would be dead by the time they did all the studies, and each doctor would do just three surgeries in a career. Within 7 days, 50 percent MN moose calves dead. After this first week, I am sure wolves and bears will now have called a a truce and switch to granola. Kill the predators, stop all the studies


From this morning�s St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press:

Minnesota: Moose study confirms high calf mortality

�The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources captured 49 moose calves and fitted them with GPS transmitter collars. Within days of finishing their work, 22 of the newborns already had died�

�Most were killed by bears and wolves.�

"We knew that we would lose a lot of calves quickly," DNR lead moose researcher Glenn DelGiudice said. "But to see it happening in real time like this is all new for us."

Do they really need to conduct a study to realize how bad wolves are? There is a reason man beat them down at the turn of the century.

Does that include hunters? If so, screw you!

I wonder how many would have died if they weren't wearing GPS transmitter collars. Sometimes adding a collar or tag to an animal can make it more of a target or slow it down.

Yes, stop all the studies, because you may not like the answers they provide. Very dangerous - data is.

BTW, there are certainly studies of the effect of collars on mortality in almost any species. You can probably google them up very easily.

And pronghorn have twins and most are eaten by coyotes. Some times our crew could deploy and recover a radio twice in one day.

And in the local paper this morning, Colorado CPW is saying the moose population might be above carrying capacity.

Go figure

Wolves/bears get their share but the problem is much bigger than that. Liver flukes, brain worm and ticks need to be added to the list. It's amazing how fast we're loosing our moose. A sad story for those of us in canoe country.

indeed, Randy. sad stuff, indeed. two years ago the ticks, specifically winter ticks were pretty newsy up there with the mooses werent' they? considering we sit at the same latitude I watch your stories with great interest as our moose are thriving.

Jeff

it will be interesting to see what the wolf census comes back at later this summer.

now the question is going to be, given that high of mortality to 2 predators, is the DNR going to take steps to save one species from going extinct in Minnesota or take steps to curb a species that is expanding its territory.

Brent, curious to see your thoughts on this. We know MN moose are swirling around the drain. We also know that wolves and bears are impacting a lot of them and may in fact be easier to control than anything else. Should we ramp up our wolf/bear control to save the moose or let them disappear from MN?

Well, the moose tag population is way below carrying capacity, at least in my wallet.

I can't say specifically and it may differ in different parts of Minnesota. But keep in mind, back in my day, the biggest moose populations were over in the Arrowhead - with ALL the wolves at the time. Isabella, MN was the center of moose and wolves for a good long time. Both expanded for a couple of decades at least - before plunging. So, wolves as a sole cause of moose decline is not likely.

With respect to calf predation, every study I have seen shows bears, specifically black bears, to be hell on young ungulates. From Alaska to Montana, and for moose in particular. Where comparable data exists for wolves, they don't hold a candle to bears.

Last, most young animals die. If not from one predator, then from another, or from some other malady. Compensatory mortality as it is known. Saving a calf from a predator won't help if it is highly likely to die anyway. Hence, population regulation via juvenile mortality/survival management is often not very successful, esp. among mammals. Of course some young have to survive, but perhaps not very many are needed to create the largest sustainable adult population. In ungulates this scenario is pretty common.

So, I doubt you gain much if anything from wiping out wolves and bears. It might even be counter productive.

For some of the moose parasites, and I think (without doing some checking), that the major parasite is one that has whitetail deer as an intermediate host. If that is the case and if hammering wolf populations leads to more deer, you may be faced with inevitably smaller moose populations. But the devils are in the details that I don't know about. So, this is a good story but not necessarily the correct story.

One thing is certain. Minnesota is really the edge of the normal species range of moose. Always has been. That is not going to change - at least not for the better. And populations on the fringes of a species' range always are subject to greater variation over time and space. So big swings up and down are to be expected for a variety of direct and indirect reasons and a large, healthy, stable population of moose is probably not reasonably possible. Take the good when you can and live with the bad when you have too. Game management can only do so much. This may be out of their range.

I will defer to any wolf/moose biologists with access to the data and a better grasp of the relevant literature, but those are my thoughts.

BTW, you may not know that wolves on Isle Royale in Lake Superior live on almost nothing BUT moose on that small island. They have for more than 50 yrs since wolves first arrived there back in the 60s or so. The point being that on that small little island moose did not go extinct from wolves, although wolves, from time to time, regulated their numbers (but often didn't). The wolves, howeve,r are headed for extinction there, probably due to inbreeding depression.

http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2012/march/story64889.html
and http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6135/919.summary

That's the stupidest statement I can imagine anyone could say given the researchers themselves noted that MOST of the calves were killed by wolves and bears. Typical liberal tree-hugging BS.

Re-read the text in the OP quoted from the article!

When you grow up enough to comprehend that as you move just a little further north there's as many wolves and bears, and a lot more moose, it might just occur to you there are even more stupid statements that become imaginable.

I have a friend who's collared a number of these calves, and he saying the pilots are telling them they are seeing different cow behavior than they have in the past.

Certainly, when white settlers moved into Minnesota we had a lot less deer and a hell of a lot more moose, bear and wolves and of course Indians. If you look at the long term evidence you can make a case for reducing predator numbers reduced moose numbers on as simplistic an assumption as you are making.

At the peak of our recent Moose population, about thirty years ago, I noted evidence of moose down as far south as Knife Lake in the middle of the state. I couldn't tell you if that was a moose in the end stages of the fluke or just a wanderer. I have as recently as 3-4 years ago seen evidence of a moose as far south as Cloverton. I have personally seen a moose in White Bear Lake. But... draw a line from Duluth to Thief River Falls and that line is what for the last hundred years has been more or less the southern boundary of moose range. Also the southern boundary of wolf range. The dynamics of this are not simple. This study will not provide an answer. If we get lucky, it might provide some better questions than we have now.

Brent, this ain't about moose because I obviously don't know doodly squat about moose just from where I live. It is about this statement of yours: "So, I doubt you gain much if anything from wiping out wolves and bears. It might even be counter productive."

I have seen you make similar statements many times. I know that preditation of any species is a multi faceted thing but what I don't understand is how removing one facet makes it worse? Lets say wolves kill x% and bears kill x% and ticks kill x% and the galloping pip kills x% and so on and so on. How does removing one of those kill percentages make the others worse so they take up all the slack?

I know back when we had screw worms here they killed a hell of a lot of whitetail deer. Got rid of the screw worms and deer numbers took off and never really looked back. Still had coyotes, bob cats, hogs, ticks etc etc.

I know we don't agree a lot on preditor control and I am all infavor of bringing back 1080. I am not trying to rattle your cage or beat you in some argument just trying to understand why removing one source of preditation makes the others worse in your opinion.

Back in the 90s, Andy Sih, and a host of others, published the best, widest survey of the effects of predators on their prey. I can get you a full citation if you wish but I'm on the road today.

Anyway, they found, among many other things, that sometimes the presence of a certain predator can actually cause increases prey abundance. In fact, this seems to happen roughly 25% of the time. There are a number of ways this can work, and the math all checks out etc. But basically, such instances always involve additional species.

One of my favorites that seems to occur in many places across the country involves coyotes and ground nesting birds. Coyotes will hunt and kill things like pheasants and even songbirds that nest on, or close to the ground. Birds aren't their favorite prey - they are mostly rabbit and mouse killers, but birds will eat. However, coyotes also put the hurt to coons, skunks, opossums, feral cats, and most especially, foxes (which are very very efficient bird killers). So, these birds lose a few of their members to coyotes but they also experience less predation from these other predators as a result of coyotes being in the area. Net result is a positive one for the bird populations.

The same can be true of if a prey species is a poor competitor with another species with which it shares a predator. If the predator prefers the dominant competitor and selectively kills more of them, the prey that is the lesser competitor gets a release from competition that might be much much greater than the negative effect it gets directly by being killed by the predator.

There are many other ways in which similar results can come about resulting in a predator benefiting a prey. But you have to look, and often look hard, because these sorts of numbers are not easy to measure in the field.

In the case of moose that are declining due to parasites, if (and I emphasize IF) the parasite uses and alternative host, like whitetailed deer, and if the deer are not dramatically hurt by the parasite themselves, a large deer population will lead to a swift increase in the parasite and a decline in moose. So, add the wolf to reduce deer and maybe the moose get a bigger boost from that the losses (particularly calf losses) they suffer directly to wolves. There are a lot of "ifs" in this argument that I cannot personally vouch for, but they are not especially unlikely "ifs" either. And keep in mind that wolves and moose persist in great abundances throughout just about all of the moose's range. So, wolves and moose can coexist in good numbers. Of that there is no doubt. But whether this current decline in moose can be thwarted by wolf reductions we really cannot say for certain without a whole lot more data than we have available to us right here. But I'd bet against it in this instance.

Well, it is time for me to get back on highway.

BCR,

Moose here suffer from a brain fluke carried by deer that doesn't kill the deer. It disorients moose making sometimes impossible to find/stay "home". Imagine a cow moose who's just dropped a calf and she is infected. Momma goes out to feed and parks baby until she returns (Just like deer). Momma can't orient where she is when it's time to return to where she parked baby. after a day or so baby gets pretty hungry, gets up and starts squalering for momma, but maybe by now, momma is 100 miles away and lost. All the noise baby makes is the dinner bell for bears and wolves. If momma doesn't get the brain fluke, baby stays put, stays quiet and stays alive because they are very difficult to find if they stay put and quiet where momma parked them. You can eliminate 90% or more of the bears and wolves and it's still going to look like the bears and wolves are eating half or more of the moose calves because they are. The problem is that maybe 100% of the moose calves that were eaten would die anyway because momma is lost.

Now, add wolves to the situation instead of reducing them. There's a small window after birth that moose calves are vulnerable. The rest of the year the wolves still have to eat. So, where do they turn? If they turn to the deer which are much, much easier than moose and more plentiful, and which also are infecting the moose with the brain fluke, more wolves might very well reduce the deer population enough to significantly reduce moose calf mortality because they simultaneously are reducing the brain fluke vector responsible for the moose calf mortality. Killing off wolves could in that case result in even greater calf losses.

I am not saying that this is what is happening, but it or something very like it could be (think bacteria). If we get lucky in this study we will get the right question(s) to ask out of it.

I think you also have to acknowledge that there may just be too many wolves and they are eating too many moose and further reduction of wolves would be a boost to moose (and deer) numbers. It is also noteworthy that deer and moose have co-existed forever in good numbers. Although a complex chain of events could be taking place, the first solution that should be explored is the simple solution. Most often, not always, but most often, the simple solution is the correct one. I learned this from watching Crime Scene Investigators by the way!

Great CSI TV for game management.

I do not doubt for a second that the MN DNR is exploring every possible solution. I am also certain that any answer they provide will be shhit-kicked into the ditch by whichever side feels most offended - regardless of whether it is right or wrong.

so, if they decide that woofs and bars are the one factor that could be controlled the easiest that would result in a rebound in moose population, would you support greatly expanding woof reduction? There is only 1 "if" in that statement. So we reduce wolves to save the moose....you would be on board that plan?

Without a lot more information, no. I would want to know if predator reduction would actually be sufficient to prevent moose extirpation, rather than just something that would delay the inevitable. I would want to know that it would or would not put the wolf population in jeopardy, and I would want to know a lot about the long-term prognosis for moose, wolves, and the condition of the habitat in northern MN. And right now, I don't have the details on any of those things.

And then I would want to know the same for bears.