Winter ticks wiped out nearly 90% of moose calves in one part of Maine last year, scientists report. The surge was driven, in part, by a warming climate. (mainepublic)
Maine is home to the largest moose population in the lower 48 states. But in one of the moosiest corners of the state, nearly 90% of the calves tracked by biologists last winter didn’t survive their first year.This story is part of our series"“You look at one data sheet after another of what we found in the woods on these moose and it’s the same profile every time: it is winter tick,” said Lee Kantar, the lead moose biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Unlike deer and dog ticks, winter ticks literally hunt in packs. Larvae gather in interlocking clumps on vegetation, and when one tick snags a passing victim, hundreds or thousands tag along for the ride. A solid coating of snow or a sustained cold snap kill those larvae and stop the hunt, which scientists call “questing.” But snow has been arriving later in the fall across northern New England.
While ticks won’t cause moose to disappear from the woods of Maine or New Hampshire — more frequent climate-related heat waves and habitat loss likely pose a bigger threat — Jones said climate change is giving the parasites a stronger toehold in some areas. Such was the case in late-April when Kantar headed out of DIF&W’s Greenville office to investigate the death of a moose that has been on his agency’s radar screen for nearly a decade.
Kantar and his team did field necropsies on most of the 60 calves that have died this past winter as part of a years-long research study in Wildlife Management District 4, which spans more than 2,000 square miles of remote, commercial forests north of the Golden Road. As a nearly 10-year-old cow, Moose 59 isn’t technically part of that current study. But she was in the first class of cows collared by DIF&W in 2014 and provided years of data before her radio collar eventually gave out.
“She’s completely pale. This is, to me, when her organs are this coloration, that’s a sign of anemia, meaning she has been fed on by ticks,” Kantar said. “And she’s got so much blood loss that it’s showing up everywhere.”
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