By Angie Wotton
Contributed photo
Moose. Gangly and awkward looking. Farmers don’t like them because they tear through their fences. Motorists fear hitting one in the dark of night. Hunters cross their fingers that they’ll be the lucky winners of the annual drawing of allotted permits. Out-of-staters consider them a must-see at some point during their visit. Biologists are fascinated and want to study them.
For a select few that is exactly what they do, including Lee Kantar, state moose biologist for Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and recent speaker at a moose topics workshop held as part of SASWCD’s Winter Ag School class series.
Kantar looks similar to what one would picture a moose cowboy to look like. Tall and lean with a drooping mustache, he’s a bit like a younger and gregarious Clint Eastwood. It’s obvious that he loves his job and the moose that his team studies.
Currently, IFW is involved in a five-year moose study, first begun in 2014 in western Maine and expanded 2015 to District 2 in The County. The study project involves radio-collaring and tracking of moose to learn more about their behavior, reproduction, landscape use, and survivability. To date, they have 150 radio-collared moose.
The process of collaring the moose could be its own reality tv show, involving skilled helicopter flying, a lightening quick netting of the moose by a specialized team member, and then the same team coming in to take blood, hair and fecal samples, check for tick numbers and finally attach the collar, all in 10-12 minutes.
Netting the animal is actually much more humane and less stressful on the moose than using a tranquilizer. Once the moose has the collar, biologists are able to track it using GPS and, when there is a mortality, they are able to respond in a time frame that allows them to take samples of blood, organs, lymph nodes, and bone marrow that will help determine cause of death. This is a little like being a doctor on-call as moose don’t always die during a tidy 9-5 schedule. More likely, Lee will receive a call from the radio-collar alerting him to the mortality in the middle of the night. He calls his team together and they head out to recover the moose and work to determine possible cause of death. The diagnostic lab at the University of Maine provides analysis of the samples.
The moose study project is being conducted in partnership with the State of New Hampshire and is the largest study of its kind in North America. From a management perspective, it is invaluable in understanding how many moose there are and their survival rates, including calves. Lee dislikes using graphs and tables in presentations and was dismayed when one popped up during his but it was helpful to see how critical the months of March and April are for moose survivability.
As many of us have heard, winter tick populations are high and are responsible for some of the mortalities, literally sucking the blood out of a moose faster than it can be restored. No matter the number of radio-collar phone calls Lee receives alerting him to a death, he still finds it sad for the animal but solidifies his belief that information collected from this study will help biologists like himself make informed decisions in the management of Maine’s moose. However you feel about moose, they are an iconic emblem of our state. Nice to know we have some moose cowboys out there working with them.
Angie Wotton loves her work as district manager for the Southern Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District. She also raises pastured pork and vegetables with her husband on their small West Berry Farm in Hammond. She can be reached 532-9407 or via email at angela.wotton@me.nacdnet.net
