Visitors to the Minnesota Zoo can see the moose calves that were captured by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources last year after being fitted with radio collars and then abandoned by their mothers. The collaring program has since been halted. The moose are named Grant, Marais, Matilda, Mac, Alice and Aurora.
Until an answer can be found as to what has caused Minnesota’s moose population to drop nearly 60 percent in the last nine years, a coalition of government and environmental groups have banded together to improve the animal’s habitat to see if that will aid in their comeback.
Last winter the annual aerial survey conducted by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) came up with an estimate of 3,450 moose, down from the 2006 estimate of 8,840. Researchers don’t know why moose, young and old, are dying so fast, but suspect it could bea a series of factors playing a part in the grim scenario, ranging from parasites, predators, disease, loss of habitat and warming temperatures.
Partners in the Minnesota Moose Habitat Collaborative include the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the U.S. Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy, the Minnesota DNR, the University of Minnesota- Duluth, the 1854 Treaty Authority, St. Louis County, Lake County and Cook County.
Funding for this project comes from the $2.96 million Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment’s Outdoor Heritage Fund. The goal is to restore high quality habitat across 8,500 acres of Minnesota’s prime moose territory.
Begun in 2013 and set to run through 2017, the collaboration’s goals include planting 2.5 million trees, clearing brush from about 1,500 acres so that new growth will bring food for moose to forage, selective timber harvesting of 1,500 acres that will be brushed and planted with seedlings, selective timber harvest and conifer reforestation on 1,500 acres and a prescribed burn on 2,500 acres to allow regeneration of young trees.
In Cook County, the U.S. Forest Service will conduct two prescribed burns in the fall, said Patty Johnson, fire management officer for the Superior National Forest. The prescribed burns will take place near Duncan and Daniel Lake near the Gunflint Trail mid-trail area and near Bower Trout Lake, areas heavily affected by the 1999 blow down.
The main objective of these burns is fuel reduction, said Johnson.
Neither area will be replanted, but will regrow naturally because they are in a wilderness, she added.
According to the collaborative, a side benefit of the burns is that new healthy habitats will be created for Minnesota’s largest herbivore. Wildlife biologists will monitor the burned acres to determine how the new food source affects the diets and overall health of moose, which prefer to browse in young, new growth. One theory wildlife researchers have discussed is that with the decline in logging over the last 15 years, moose have not gotten the nutrition they need as they go into winter. Malnutrition can lead to lower birth rates and moose aren’t as able to withstand illness and are more susceptible to the effects of parasites and disease.
It might not be the whole puzzle, but if it is a piece that aids in helping to restore the moose population, it will give scientists more time to figure out the rest of the pieces before moose disappear from the northern Minnesota landscape like the wildland caribou before it.
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