In 1982, Dr. Vince Crichton, in his role at the Wildlife Branch, helped implement conservation measures to protect the estimated 30,000 moose remaining in Manitoba. The goal was to rebuild the population to 40,000+ moose before returning to the regular bag limits. Now, in 2019 there are maybe half, maybe 15,000 moose remaining in Manitoba.
There is no simple explanation. Moose suffered from increased predation from expanding populations of black bears and gray wolves. Whitetail deer are hosts for liver fluke and brain worm, and their range has increasingly overlapped with moose. When a population is vulnerable, losses to drownings and injury are not insignificant. Moose have survived the worst of 4,500 years in Manitoba browsing on plants and twigs. When something so big and so strong is threatened, it should may us uncomfortable and spark a response.
Moose may never recover in many areas of south and central Manitoba where humans are concentrated. Moose management involves discrete populations of animals that are bound by limiting features like geography and food supply. If you drill down into the discrete populations of moose that live in Manitoba, you will find over a dozen game hunting areas that have open seasons where there are 100 to 150 moose. These licenced hunts need to stop because they are in no way sustainable.
Consider one hundred moose; forty are mature cows that are capable of reproducing each year. Those mature cows will give birth to about thirty-eight calves. Only nine of those thirty-eight calves will live to their first birthday. The other twenty-nine calves are killed by bears, wolves, disease, hunting, injuries, drowning or vehicle accidents. Only nine calves per one hundred moose, and those same threats of disease and predation continue well beyond a first birthday. Only nine calves per one hundred moose, and now introduce the stress and danger of the rut. Only nine calves per one hundred moose, and now hunters of all varieties.
If we want moose in Manitoba, to start: conservation closures in the south to reduce the impact of hunting. And, old access roads in the north built for logging and mining should be ripped to preserve remote wilderness areas. These are horrible decisions that we have to make. Government is not getting it done, and that don’t change no matter what party is in power. As hunters, we shoulder the responsibility for being informed about our quarry and conservation-minded in our taking of game for food and other purposes.
