AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is gearing up for the second year of a five-year study of the state’s moose population. A crew will begin capturing and fitting GPS collars on 38 moose next week.
This effort follows last year’s capture of 60 moose, each of which was collared and monitored.
“By radio-collaring moose and actively monitoring their movements, we can further understand the factors that can impact Maine’s moose population,” DIF&W moose biologist Lee Kantar said in a news release.
The information gathered guided biologists when they reduced the number of moose-hunting permits by 24.7 percent after high mortality in the 2014 study group.
In 2014, 30 cow moose and 30 calves were captured and collared. By May, nine of the 30 adult females, or 30 percent, and 21 of 30 calves, or 70 percent, had died.
At the time, Kantar said he was confident a heavy load of winter ticks played a role in their deaths.
“The calculations have been made that the ticks on the back of a moose take enough blood volume to create either a chronic state of anemia or an acute state of anemia,” Kantar said at the time. “[The moose] has lost so much blood that it can’t replace it. It puts a hurt on them.”
Calves are usually the first to succumb to those kinds of stresses, Kantar said.
“You get a winter when it’s got a ton of winter ticks on it, and now it’s plowing through heavy snow at a time when nutritionally it’s the poorest time of year for moose,” he said in May. “It’s got all this going against it. That’s a tough situation for a moose calf in its first winter to get through.”
A crew from AeroTech, a New Mexico-based company that specializes in capturing and collaring large animals, has again been hired to handle that task. DIF&W personnel will pre-fly parts of Wildlife Management District 8 in western Maine to find cows and calves traveling together, which will aid the AeroTech helicopter crew when it goes out in search of animals.
The crew hopes to capture three adult females and 35 calves that were born in the spring of 2014.
The collars will transmit a GPS signal twice a day and allow biologists to track their movements, according to the news release. Should the collar stop moving for a predetermined amount of time, it sends out a mortality signal and biologists scramble to that site to perform a necropsy that will determine a cause of death.
“This project is just one component of the department’s multi-faceted moose management system,” Kantar said in the release. “It provides us with another important tool to ensure we have the most relevant data needed to manage our moose population.”
During last year’s capture-and-collar effort, one member of the AeroTech crew ended up on the wrong end of an aggravated baby moose, and the resulting GoPro video was viewed by thousands on the Internet.
“That’s the first time I had a baby moose come after me,” Wes Livingston explained in a February 2014 interview. “Cow moose, you’re cautious that they’ll come after you. Those are the worst ones: buffalo and moose.
Livingston, who works winters for AeroTech and owns a saddle shop in Cody, Wyoming, said he has had a few other interactions with wildlife while capturing and collaring animals.
“I’ve been very lucky,” he said. “I’ve had coyotes bite me before, a deer poke a hole in me — nothing serious. Just in the leg with a horn. No broken bones.”
