Ontario needs to ban hunters from killing young moose — those under 18 months old — until the government figures out how to reverse a sharp drop in the animal’s population, a provincial wildlife group is urging.
“It doesn’t make sense — in a population of animals that is declining — that you are taking out the future breeders,” said Dave Pearce, manager of forest conservation for the Wildlands League.
“It’s essentially the future of the population.”
On Thursday, the not-for-profit advocacy group will publicly call on the province to not only halt the calf hunt but also create “moose refuge areas” to help protect habitats, as well as boost funding for monitoring and research.
Last October, Ontario’s environmental commissioner Dianne Saxe warned of the need for action, citing an alarming 20 per cent drop in the moose population across the province over the past decade — a number that has hit 50 per cent in Thunder Bay, and even 60 per cent in Cochrane. She blamed a loss of roadless areas, disease, parasites and hunting as well as climate change.
By banning the calf hunt, “the idea is to buy some breathing space for moose and give them some resilience and make sure that hunting is not driving them down on top of all these other factors, and to figure out what else is driving the declines,” added Pearce. “…But if you continue to hunt calves and continue to have access to some of the best moose habitats, we don’t think that moose have a good chance to recover.”
A spokesperson for the natural resources minister said the government has completed the second phase of its Moose Project “to continue discussions regarding moose population, the factors affecting moose, and actions that could be taken to address those factors.”
“This resulted in new moose population objectives and changes to moose hunting seasons to address concerns about fewer calves and fewer moose being observed in recent surveys,” said Emily Kirk. “These changes are necessary to help sustain and ultimately grow Ontario’s moose population.”
She said the government will “continue monitoring moose populations and will evaluate the need for additional changes to ensure a healthy and sustainable Moose population here in Ontario.”
The Wildlands League, affiliated with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, has close to 31,000 members in Ontario. It is speaking out now because the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is currently conducting moose surveys and decisions on the 2017 hunting season are on the way.
In most parts of the province, hunters don’t need a tag to hunt a calf, and “Ontario, as far as we know, has the most liberal calf rules of any jurisdiction in North America” where the population is under threat, Pearce said.
The league is not anti-hunting, he added, but rather wants to ensure healthy wildlife populations.
Natural Resources Minister Kathryn McGarry has previously said moose are a concern across North America, and one the government takes seriously, noting it made changes to the hunting season in the past two years, shortening the calf hunting season by two weeks and, last year, delaying the entire moose hunting season for a week. However, cancelling the moose hunt was not under consideration, she has also said.
At Trent University, a professor who has spent years studying the moose population in Algonquin Park, said “the key to a healthy moose population is to keep females alive… if (the population) is declining, we need to know why they are declining,” said Dennis Murray.
“Is it adults? Juveniles? Is it due to low survival, low productivity (reproduction), or are they moving out of the area? We really can’t make informed management decisions (otherwise),” said Murray, of the university’s integrative wildlife conservation lab.
That was echoed by Brian McLaren, of Lakehead University’s natural resources management program, who noted that female (or “cow”) moose hunting tags have increased tremendously in recent years.
While tracking moose is onerous and expensive for the province, Murray said “if there has been this decline across the board, it does warrant some concerted efforts to better understand the mechanisms behind the decline.”
While much has been made of the fact that there are more moose hunters — 98,000 — than moose, estimated at 92,300 — “it’s the harvest rate that matters, and that’s set by the province.”
Both he and McLaren see value in a sustainable hunt, “but you need to know if that hunt is sustainable,” said Murray.
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