Moose hunt goes on, but what’s the state of Quebec’s herd?
Peter Black
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
Peterblack@qctonline.com
I come from a place where in the morning you can go to a wildlife park and pet a moose on the muzzle, and later that same day see a pickup truck with a moose head strapped to the roof cruise down the main drag. Not the same moose, we assume.
Moose hunting season is in full swing – or should that be full blast? – in this province as it is elsewhere in the country (with the exception of P.E.I., where there are no moose, but four species of snake!).
Newfoundland has the highest moose population density in the land, with approximately 120,000 roving the Rock, every one of them descended from a pair imported in 1878 and two pairs in 1904.
For many city-slickers, animal rights sympathizers and generally people with a soul, the cold-blooded killing of a creature as majestic and massive as the moose is an atrocity, yet it’s an atrocity that’s embraced by a startling number of ordinary peace-loving citizens each year.
Last season Quebec’s wildlife authority issued more than 170,000 moose hunting permits which resulted in the harvest (slaughter?) of about 18,400 of the “shimmering beasts” as they are known in folklore.
In case you were wondering, there were 133,000 deer hunters in 2022 who bagged some 55,000 future venison steaks. That excludes new UNESCO World Heritage Site Anticosti Island, where the hunt scarcely makes a dent in the teeming deer population, estimated at more than 50,000, with not a predator in sight except for the occasional gun-toting human.
Overpopulation of moose is also a problem in some places in Quebec. In Forillon National Park in the Gaspé, for example, they’re dealing with what biologists call a hyperabundance of moose, which is causing a serious degradation of the forest.
As strange as it sounds, occurrences that humans fear or loathe – forest fires, insect infestations (spruce budworm), logging operations and windstorm damage – are manna to moose populations, who are crazy, in their laid-back ungulate way, for the fresh, green growth of forest regeneration.
Climate change may be an increasingly important factor in the future health of moose herds, with the blood-sucking winter tick becoming more prevalent because of more clement winters. A recent study in Maine, home to the largest moose herd in the United States, found that increasing the number of hunting permits – a modest cull, in other words – drastically reduced the number of calves succumbing to the effects of winter ticks.
In Forillon Park, the main recommendation of an exhaustive study of the moose overpopulation problem is a “conservation hunt” to reduce numbers. No one is in a rush to launch such a mass execution, and its “social acceptability” may be the subject of some debate.
Elsewhere in the province, there is debate about the actual state of the moose population outside of places where hunting is banned, like parks. Last week, the Quebec Federation of Hunters and Fishers submitted a petition to the National Assembly calling for better management of the province’s moose.
The concern is that there’s inadequate collection of data on the number and whereabouts of moose in many zones of the province. In the sprawling La Vérendrye wildlife preserve north of Mont Tremblant, for example, a scarcity of the animals has prompted the government to impose a moratorium on moose hunting that’s now in its third year.
The federation, in its “cry of alarm” wants the Quebec government to boost funding for aerial surveys and ensure more co-ordination of data between government, Indigenous communities, hunters and other stakeholders to get a clearer global picture of the condition of the herd.
Federation president Marc Renaud told the Journal de Québec, “We do not want to relive the period of the 1980s and 90s when moose herds were seriously in trouble. We need to know more about the diseases and the different types of users of the resource. Sport hunters should not be the only ones penalized.”
Are moose endangered in Quebec? Are hunters and disease threatening the herd? Apparently, no one really knows. Meanwhile, the hunt goes on for the king of the forest, the shimmering beast.
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