Study: Wolves have little impact on moose

[TransitJohn]

By JEFF GEARINO Tuesday, September 14, 2004


JIM LAYBOURN/Star-Tribune correspondent A cow moose and her twin calves visit a backyard in the Wilson area on a recent afternoon.

Southwest Wyoming bureau

GREEN RIVER -- Malnutrition and starvation -- not wolves -- have drastically reduced moose numbers in northwest Wyoming, the author of a new decade-long study says.

"I know people don't want to believe this ... but moose are not in the diets of wolves," Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Wyoming Game and Fish commissioners during a meeting last week in Casper.

The study is one part of the larger debate in recent years about the effects of wolf predation on the state's big game species -- particularly on elk in western Wyoming herds.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists say wolves continue to expand their range in western Wyoming. Wolves have now killed elk on 14 of the 22 state-operated feedgrounds and have displaced elk at several feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre and North Piney area. But there were little data about wolf impacts on moose populations.
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http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/09/14/news/7c715640f0699f9487256f0f0007ab4b.txt

[blindpig]

1. ah yes,was it not for the sake of moose

that those assholes in Alaska implemented their aerial pogrom of wolves?

[Viking12]

2. Need to point out that the study shouldn't be generalized beyond

that specific geographical region. There is a well documented wolf/moose predation on Lake Superior's Isle Royal and perhaps other areas as well.

[blindpig]

4. good point

social animals tend to develop local "cultures", I'm thinking more of primates but don't see why it wouldn't occur in such critters.
Still like to know the skinny on the Alaska cull, almost all predator control is bogus and wrong, the result of laziness, stupid fear and greed.

[dubyaD40web]

3. Have to make sure that the wolves don't kill the moose...

...so that the hunters can kill the moose instead.