Moose researchers seek to avert abandonments
Published 10:22 am Monday, June 9, 2014
MINNEAPOLIS — Wildlife biologists trying to find answers about northeastern Minnesota’s declining moose population were dismayed at how many mothers would abandon their calves shortly after researchers attached GPS tracking collars to the newborns. They’re now cautiously hopeful that they’ve found a solution.
Department of Natural Resources researchers started attaching GPS collars to adult moose early last year. The collars gave them regular updates that made it possible to tell when the females were about to give birth. Biologists would give the mother and its calf or twins at least 36 to 48 hours to bond, then swoop in by helicopter to collar the calves and perform health checks. That approach has worked well in Alaska and elsewhere.
But in Minnesota, seven of 31 mothers either never returned or came back but didn’t stay long last spring. So the head of the DNR’s moose calf mortality project, Glenn DelGiudice, and his team consulted specialists around the world.
“The advice we got was lose the helicopter,” DelGiudice said Friday from his field station near Ely.
The abandonments came as a surprise to moose researchers, said Ron Moen of the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota Duluth.