28 May Parks Canada video makes the case for a moose cull
Parks Canada released a video yesterday explaining how the extreme overpopulation of moose in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park threatens the area’s boreal forest—a region of spruce, fir, tamarack, and yellow birch that covers much of northern Canada, but only a shrinking portion of the Cape Breton highlands in Nova Scotia.
One of many explainers on the Parks and Natural Resources Canada websites (see also here, here, and here) describes how the situation got out of hand:
[I]n the 1970s, spruce budworm consumed large areas of mature boreal forest in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, removing 90% of the forest cover in some areas. This, in turn, created a flush of new growth of young trees and shrubs—perfect food for moose.
With lots of food and few predators, the moose population in northern Cape Breton grew rapidly. Since that time the state of the boreal forest has declined. Large areas that were once forest are unable to regenerate as moose have browsed any seedlings that grew over 30 cm high. These over-browsed and stunted trees have started to die and have now been replaced by a thick and persistent mat of grass and ferns.
Already, Moose have converted 11 percent of the highlands from boreal forest to grasslands. Loss of forest cover threatens such federal species at risk as the Bicknell’s thrush, and provincial species at risk such as American marten and Canada lynx.
There are now four times as many moose in the highlands as a healthy, balanced forest can sustain. Parks staff are experimenting with several approaches to the problem, including exclosures (areas that are fenced to keep moose out), controlled fires, and a controversial cull of moose in the North Mountain area, begun by Mi’kmaq hunters last fall, then postponed after a confrontation by non-native protesters (who alternately oppose, and demand a piece of, the cull), then finally completed in December.
H/T: HMcD