#Colorado
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| Michael Yearout Photography |
Moose have become commonplace in Rocky Mountain National Park, which should be no real surprise. Some 24 were released not far away, in North Park, in 1978. Now 2,500 roam across mountainous Colorado.
But are there too many moose now in the national park? That's the question that emerges from several news stories this year about a new research study. Up to 40 moose are being outfitted with GPS monitors to better understand them and their use of their environment.
Moose were not native to Colorado, at least in the numbers they are now found. Some evidence from the 1850s exists of small numbers of transient moose, typically lone bulls, but no breeding populations.
Even after introduction in Colorado, moose mostly remained on the west side of the Continental Divide, in the Kawuneeche Valley. Ten years or so ago, says Sky-Hi News, sightings became more common near Estes Park, the gateway town on the east side.
Monitoring of vegetation suggest more and more moose on both sides. Vegetative plots monitored on the west side showed an increase from 80 percent, having evidence of moose at 100 percent between 2013 and 2018. On the east side, the increase was even greater; 3 percent to 85 percent.
Expanding moose have contributed significantly to the 40 percent reduction in willows in the park during the last two decades. Willows provide 93 percent of a moose's 55-pound daily diet. Elk grazing also contributes to the decline, along with a fungus spread by birds that feed on willow sap, says
landscape ecologist Hanem Abouelezz.
Willows serve as soil stabilizers in riparian zones, which serve as the interface between land and a river or stream and are critical to watershed health, wildlife habitat and overall ecosystem health, explains the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph. "Without such vegetation, the riparian zone can wash away, impacting the aquatic and terrestrial landscape."
Without grizzly bears and wolves — primary predators of moose — the willows have few defenses.
"The changes that caused the moose population to grow, the willows to die off and the riparian zones to be impacted didn't happen overnight, and neither will the solution," Abouelezz told the Gazette-Telegraph.
"Whatever is done," she added, "it will not be an effort to recreate some balance that would have still existed had it not been for the large role of humans in the last 100 years."
