New Hampshire is celebrating the lottery for its annual moose hunt, but I suspect there soon won’t be any hunt because we won’t have enough moose: The mortality rate of moose calves in New Hampshire this winter was a staggering 80 percent, due mostly to a warm winter allowing more ticks to thrive.
The Union-Leader has the story here under the appropriate headline “Moose Study Yields Grim Results”.
It ends on a very slightly hopeful note: “Assuming things stay the same, the state’s overall moose population — estimated to be around 4,000 — will decrease, said (a biologist). As a result, so will the number of winter ticks. He said at some point, possibly 40 years from now, the populations of the two species will stabilize, though there will be many fewer moose than now.”
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