85-year-old woman wields shovel to stop moose stomping

An agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off.

George Murphy, 82, and his wife, Dorothea Taylor, 85, told the story of their recent moose encounter Sunday afternoon from Murphy's hospital room in Anchorage, where he is recovering from gashes to his head and left leg as well as seven broken ribs.

They were at the Willow Airport around 10:30 a.m. Friday running their golden retrievers as they do almost every day. They drive along the access road in their truck and let the dogs, Fellar and King Tut, run on ahead.

When it came time to round up the dogs, Murphy told Taylor she could wait in the truck.

"Sometimes both of us go and walk the old dog back," Taylor said. Fellar is 12 and moves slow. Tut, his son, is 3 and can run like the dickens. "But this time it was 30 below and just too darn cold out there."

Murphy was hiking back to the truck with Fellar when he saw the moose up the road. As he first told the story, he referred to the ungulate as a bull but when he thought about it later, decided it must have been a cow. No matter. It was big, and stressed.

"He was way off. Jeez, he spotted me and he started to come right after me. So I was trying to get to the truck. But I didn't make it," Murphy said.

At the airport, there were no trees to duck behind. Murphy dove into the deep snow for protection. And the moose came at him.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

George Murphy, 82, and his wife, Dorothea Taylor, 85, told the story of their recent moose encounter Sunday afternoon from Murphy's hospital room in Anchorage, where he is recovering from gashes to his head and left leg as well as seven broken ribs.

They were at the Willow Airport around 10:30 a.m. Friday running their golden retrievers as they do almost every day. They drive along the access road in their truck and let the dogs, Fellar and King Tut, run on ahead.

When it came time to round up the dogs, Murphy told Taylor she could wait in the truck.

"Sometimes both of us go and walk the old dog back," Taylor said. Fellar is 12 and moves slow. Tut, his son, is 3 and can run like the dickens. "But this time it was 30 below and just too darn cold out there."

Murphy was hiking back to the truck with Fellar when he saw the moose up the road. As he first told the story, he referred to the ungulate as a bull but when he thought about it later, decided it must have been a cow. No matter. It was big, and stressed.

"He was way off. Jeez, he spotted me and he started to come right after me. So I was trying to get to the truck. But I didn't make it," Murphy said.

At the airport, there were no trees to duck behind. Murphy dove into the deep snow for protection. And the moose came at him.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

Read more her"He started to stomp. Then he turned around and stomped again. And there was nothing I could do. I was afraid he was going to kill me."

"He started to stomp. Then he turned around and stomped again. And there was nothing I could do. I was afraid he was going to kill me."

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

97 POUNDS OF FURY

Murphy, a retired state construction engineer, flew for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race nearly three decades, stopping only a couple of years ago. He once was the chief pilot for the race. He's well known among both mushers and pilots as well as the news crews he carried to cover the race. He ran a flying service for a while and still has the 1948 Aeronica he bought back in 1966, when he first met Taylor in the then-new village of Port Lions, on Kodiak Island.

He and Taylor, a retired teacher, are both familiar with wild animals. They filled their freezer with moose and caribou until they gave up hunting a couple of years back. They've been married some 40 years.

From inside the truck, Taylor heard the dogs barking in alarm and jumped out to investigate. At 5 feet tall and 97 pounds, she is tiny but tough. Years ago, she shot and killed a trophy size brown bear on Kodiak Island. The mount is on the wall of the home they built on 8 acres in Willow.

She saw the moose rear up and strike at something on the ground with its front hooves. She didn't know that her husband was down or that the moose was stomping him. She couldn't see him in the snow.

Tut was at the moose's rear, barking and trying to nip its back legs. Fellar was standing near the moose's front, barking like crazy too.

"I thought he was trying to kill Fellar, the old dog," Taylor said.

Still unaware of the danger her husband was in, she yelled for him to come help her with the dogs.

On instinct, she ran to where the action was. "And the moose started after me."

A HANDY TOOL

Taylor raced back to the truck but instead of jumping in for safety, she released the tailgate to look for something she could use. She grabbed a big grain shovel that they keep on hand to dig out if the truck gets stuck.

She walked back to the moose, making a racket with the shovel on the road, where the snow was hard-packed. She kept shouting for her husband to get over there and help.

Taylor took a swing at the moose and it backed off a little, but then it reared up and stomped its target again. It didn't let up.

"So I kept hitting it some more," Taylor said. She swung mainly at the rump but said she got in at least one good lick to the head. She knew she was too close but what could she do? Finally, the moose turned away.

"When it turned and started to go off slowly, I hit it with everything I had," she said. Tut, the younger dog, took over and chased the moose away.

"Then I saw it wasn't Fellar the moose was after at all. He was striking over the top of Fellar, to get George."

Her husband was conscious and said he may have broken ribs. That was the least of it, she thought. Blood was spurting out of a deep crack in his head. The snow was crimson. She grabbed his Iditarod baseball cap, which had fallen off, and used it to try to stop the flow the blood.

She couldn't get her husband up so she got the dogs in the truck and then ran for help.

She checked her pockets for her cellphone but couldn't find it -- she forgot it was in her purse, back in the truck. She dashed to the hangar for Denali Flying Service and hoped the owners were there.

"I jerked the door open and called 'Help! Help!' " Barry Stanley came out and called 911.

Even then, Taylor thought her husband would die from the loss of blood. Anchorage was just too far away.

But help came in time. The Willow volunteer fire department got there and stabilized him. Murphy was then rushed by medical helicopter to Providence Alaska Medical Center.

'AT THE END OF THEIR ROPE'

It's hard to say what set the moose off. If it was a cow, there was no calf around that might have explained its behavior. Maybe a snowmachine harassed it. Maybe the dogs spooked it. It might just have been stressed from an especially harsh winter, with extreme cold temperatures and heavy snow.

"They don't actually have a heckuva lot to eat," Murphy said.

"And they don't have enough stamina," Taylor said.

"They're just at the end of their rope," Murphy said. "They'll just strike out at anything."

He is not upset with the moose. Neither is his wife. They don't want anyone to try to kill it. No one could be sure they got the right one, anyway.

How long did the attack last?

"Forever," Taylor said.

"Too long," Murphy added. Every time he thought it was over, the moose struck again. It had a scary look in its eyes.

Just as Taylor didn't know her husband was under attack, he didn't know his wife was fighting off the moose. Now that he's heard the story, he's sure it would have killed him without her quick action. Her effort was amazing, he said.

"Jeez, that was a pretty hard thing for anyone to do, to walk up on a moose like that. Heck, all she had was a shovel."

"Well, we've helped each other out of problems before. This just happened to be the latest," Taylor said.

Murphy spent hours in the emergency department and then a night and day in intensive care. They don't know how many stitches he got but the main gash to his head is at least 6 inches long. He has a big wound on his left leg, too. He can walk on his own and says he feels pretty good. He is officially in fair condition. Many pilots have popped in to see him or send wishes. He hopes to go home soon.

When he awoke in the ICU Saturday morning, he first thought the whole thing was one bad dream. Then he noticed the hospital ceiling and knew he wasn't home.

They still plan to run their dogs at the airport. "I'll probably have a revolver," Taylor said. Then she stopped herself. She doesn't want to needlessly kill a wild animal. She'll have to think more on that.

"We still like to have the moose around," Murphy said.

Still, next time he won't go as far from the truck.

http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html?story_link=email_msg

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

e: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

Biologists: BWCA fire will help moose habitat

St. Paul, Minn. - Count Minnesota's moose experts among those quietly celebrating the fire that has burned more than 150 square miles in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Wildlife biologist Mike Schrage has taken many flights over the area of the Boundary Waters where the fire is burning while researching Minnesota's moose population. And he's noticed fewer moose there compared to other areas of northeastern Minnesota.

The fire - and the new forest growth that follows in the next few years - could change that, he said.

"As soon as I heard there was a fire up there, I thought - woo-hoo! I can't say that very loudly because there's people in Isabella who are quite inconvenienced by it, but I think moose will benefit from this fire," said Schrage, who works for the Fond du Lac Band's Resource Management Division.

In the coming years, it could also benefit the thousands of people visiting the Boundary Waters who hope to catch a glimpse of one.

Estimates by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources of northeastern Minnesota's moose population show a decline from about 8,000 moose during the middle of the last decade to less than 5,000 this year. Biologists are trying to figure out why. Parasites and stress from warmer temperatures are possibilities, and Schrage said a large-scale fire could kill some of the winter ticks that feed on moose and weaken them.

There has also been some concern about whether moose have adequate habitat. A group of conservation organizations have even proposed to start using money from the state's Legacy Amendment to restore moose habitat in northeastern Minnesota.

Moose like to eat new growth, such as tree saplings, so a fire clears out some of the older, woody, trees and shrubs and allows new plants and trees to grow. There are even certain types of trees, including black spruce and jack pine, that need fire for their cones to open and scatter seeds.

Schrage said research across North America has indicated that moose numbers increase in areas where fires have caused new growth. And he's seen anecdotal evidence of that in the area that burned during the Ham Lake fire of 2007 and the Cavity Lake fire of 2006.

"I think slowly we're seeing some moose respond to those fires," he said.

How well suited the forest will be for moose will depend on how hot or how long a fire burned in an area. Steve Merchant, DNR wildlife programs manager, expects the land affected by the fire will be a mix of areas that don't burn and areas that burn a lot. That means that in a few years, moose will have both the new growth for food and the older areas where tall trees still stand and offer thermal cover during the winter and summer, he said.

"That interspersion is what really creates that ideal moose habitat," Merchant said.

The Boundary Waters, of which roughly 10 percent has burned in the fire, is home to a significant portion of Minnesota's moose population, Merchant said. Prescribed burns have taken place in the area over the years, but the total size of the areas burned in a given years is much less than the area
burned by the Pagami Creek fire.

One thing biologists aren't worried about is losing moose in the fire. The animals are able to walk long distances and are good swimmers.

"They're going to run from the fire," said Ron Moen, a researcher at the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota-Duluth who monitors dozens of moose that have been fitted with radio collars and GPS units.

Moen said the closest moose he's monitoring is several miles away from the fire, and so far the research team hasn't detected any unusual movements. He said he'll be watching for moose to soon move into areas that weren't burned as severely.

"When these new trees come in, and shrubs and saplings, moose that are on the edge of that area will start moving into it. And then they'll gradually move further out as it grows and there are more moose around," he said.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/09/16/bwca-fire-moose/

All-white moose sighted near Delta Junction

by Tim Mowry / tmowry@newsminer.com
May 27, 2011

FAIRBANKS — The white moose that has been seen kicking around Delta Junction the past two years is evidently still kicking.

Jacob White was on the Tanana River in his riverboat Tuesday night when he saw the moose on the bank of the river in roughly the same area it was seen by boaters last fall.

“I was just cruising up the river,” White said. “I saw it from about a half mile away. I thought it was a horse for a second. Then it was like, ‘Wait a second; that’s an albino moose.’”

White snapped some photos of the all-white moose, which his wife, Ana, posted on her Facebook page.

“I wish I had gotten better pictures,” White said.

While there has been some debate as to whether the moose is a true albino or not, White said the moose had pink eyes and a pink nose.

Albino moose are not common, but they occasionally appear as the result of a double recessive gene passed through generations, according to state wildlife biologists.

The white moose, which appears to be a cow, was first spotted in Delta a little more than a year and a half ago as a young calf with its mother, a normal-colored, brown cow. Since then, it has been spotted several times in the same general area around Tanana Loop Extension and Jack Warren Road. Before the latest sighting and pictures taken by White, it had been several months since the last sighting.

“She’s within 10 miles of where she was seen last year,” White said, not wanting to divulge the specific location to avoid hordes of sightseers who might harass the animal. “She’s out feeding on some grasses on the Tanana River. She’s looking pretty good. We’re glad it’s still running around.”

Dave Davenport, a technician at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Delta Junction, said “chances are good” that it’s the same white moose that has been spotted around Delta Junction for the past year and a half.

Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - All white moose sighted near Delta Junction

http://newsminer.com/bookmark/13478793-All-white-moose-sighted-near-Delta-Junction

Moose sighting and spring arrivals

By Thom Smith, Special to the Eagle
Updated: 04/25/2011 11:09:08 AM EDT

Monday April 25, 2011

The moose seen feeding off Route 7 in Lanesborough much of last week is an unusual, but not unheard of situation. My take is it is most likely a cow about to give birth and having found a plentiful food source is staying put for the time being.

Moose feed in or near clearings and open areas browsing on tender leaves, tree bark and twigs, aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation. Their diet also includes, grasses and other herbaceous plants, and this one has found a bounty.

I have not seen this particular animal, and do not want to pay a visit and add to the potential dangerous situation caused by parking along a state highway.

The last week of April and the beginning of May are exciting times for winter weary Berkshire residents.

New birds are arriving almost daily and flowering plants are popping up at a refreshing rate.

Amphibians are out and about with the urge to mate as evidenced by the clamor emanating from the shallows of nearby ponds. Look for the white blossoms of the common shadbush shrub along the edges of woods.

About now, the lilacs blossom, and the time has arrived, finally, to look for a variety of different violets, perhaps in your lawn.

In the woods, look for foamflower, wake-robin, wild ginger, trout lily and maybe a few late hepaticas.

Chimney swifts may be seen and heard, as they fly over head.

Towhees and house wrens should be arriving; field and song sparrows will be singing. By now, phoebes should be on nest, and hummingbirds - first the males followed a bit later by the females - will be looking for sugar water feeders to compliment spring flowers.

Yellow warblers will be arriving, along with other spring warblers including Magnolia, black-throated blue and black-throated green, black and white, and common yellowthroats. Before the trees are fully in leaf is a wonderful time to see these small colorful birds.

The northern (Baltimore) oriole will be arriving too. And listen for the long trill of the American toad, competing with the din of the spring peeper. After all, it is spring and we deserve it.

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/thomsmith/ci_17922234

$100,000 Reward For Photo Of NZ Moose

Thursday, 7 April, 2011 - 16:51

In 1910, six female and four male Canadian moose were released into the New Zealand wilderness by the government of the time, as game resource.

Conditions proved far from ideal and over the years few were ever seen.

The last one sighted and shot in 1952 was presumed to be the end of the moose population in the southern hemisphere. Nothing was heard apart from rumour and speculation. Then in 1971 a possible sighting sparked a hunt for the surviving population of these enigmatic animals.

In 1971 an antler was found.

In 1995 a picture was taken of a possible female at Herrick Creek.

Hair samples found in 2002 and DNA tested proved to be moose hair. According to moose expert Ken Tustin "We know that instead of being dead, a moose stood on a beach at the northern side of Wet Jacket Arm in Fiorland. It fed there, and moved on to feed somewhere else'.

This puts the hunt outside the realm of a hoax. The debate around the New Zealand moose continues.

We're putting forward a challenge to prove the existence once and for all. Provide us with verifiable video or photo evidence that could help us save this giant swamp donkey and you're in the chance to win $100,000. Hallenstein CEO Graeme Popplewell said " It's a guy thing there is a little bit of a hunter in everyman and this is a mystery that needs to be solved".

http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/100000-reward-photo-nz-moose/5/87388

Moose on the loose in shopping centre

Published: 8:43AM BST 16 Jul 2010

Shopkeepers in Norway are clearing up after a moose ran through a flower shop, a bakery and a supermarket.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/7893532/Moose-on-the-loose-in-shopping-centre.html

2-year-old cow moose picks area man’s yard to lie down and die. (Via D R Shoop)

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/776792-196/2-year-old-cow-moose-picks-area-mans-yard.html

photos at URL

MERRIMACK – When he wakes up every morning, Rob Munroe glances out the front window to see what’s going on in his Shady Lane neighborhood. Imagine the unpleasant surprise that greeted him Wednesday when a 300-pound moose lay down in his front yard to die.

It’s not clear what killed the moose, estimated to be about 2 years old. The cow appeared to be in good physical condition, was not bleeding and had no outward signs of problems, according to N.H. Fish and Game. Because no pattern of moose dying in that way has developed in the community, the department did not conduct an investigation into the cause of death, said Mark Ellingwood, a wildlife biologist with Fish and Game.

“One moose does not make a trend,” Ellingwood said. “Unless we see some pattern of moose dying, we wouldn’t be inclined to look further.” He added, “There’s lot of things that can happen to animals that we simply can’t quantify.” Ellingwood said he’s confident that the moose didn’t suffer from chronic wasting disease, a contagious, neurological condition that affects deer, elk and moose. Known as the deer version of “mad cow disease,” CWD has been spreading across the country and is as close as New York state, raising concern among wildlife officials.

“If we suspected that was the case, we’d look further into it,” Ellingwood said, adding that New Hampshire monitors CWD by sampling about 400 deer each year. The many possible causes of the moose’s death include simple malnutrition; being hit by a vehicle and suffering from internal injuries; or diseases and malnutrition cause by ticks. Another possibility is brain worm, a microscopic parasite that can causes neurological problems.
It’s not uncommon for moose to die of brain worm, Ellingwood said, especially in southern New Hampshire.
“It happens a number of times a year,” Ellingwood said.

Ellingwood said it is unusual for a moose to die in areas as urban as central Merrimack. Shady Lane is just off Baboosic Lake Road, a main thoroughfare in Merrimack. Munroe, 51, lives in a split-level house at 1 Shady Lane. In his 20 years there, he said he has seen one other moose: a bull, which tramped through his property en route to Bedford and was eventually shot by police because it was deemed rabid.

Other than some cardinals, squirrels, and a flock of turkeys that showed up one Thanksgiving, Munroe hasn’t seen much wildlife. But on Wednesday, about 8:45 a.m., he spotted the moose. She was about 15 feet from his front door, sitting somewhat on hind legs, seemingly trying to get up, Munroe said. “I said, ‘Oh my god! There’s a moose!’ ” Munroe recalled. “There were two other people here, so I told them … Nobody believed me.”
Munroe called the police and decided to stay inside.

“I didn’t want to get into no altercation with it,” he said.

From the window, Munroe saw that officers arrived as the cow lay down on her side, stretching her legs. She died within a few minutes. Police reported that Fish and Game would arrive within a couple of hours. When they did, Munroe said he helped them gently drag the moose over to the driveway. The department then scooped the body up with a loader and placed it in the bed of a pickup truck. As is customary, Ellingwood said, Fish and Game delivered the carcass to “appropriate rural circumstances, where natural decay and wildlife can consume it without offending anyone.

Photo may show moose not seen in 50 years (sent by Tony Lucas)

MYSTERY BEAST: Otago moose hunter Ken Tustin is unsure whether this photo captured a moose or a deer.

Is this a moose on the loose?


Otago moose hunter Ken Tustin thinks he may have snapped a photograph of a juvenile moose in southwestern Fiordland.

The hulking animals have not been officially spotted in New Zealand for more than 50 years.

The photograph was taken on March 7 in an area of Fiordland known as Herrick creek, Mr Tustin said.

It was snapped automatically by one of 13 cameras he had set up in the area.

When he retrieved the images a few days ago, he waded through thousands that showed only deer.

"But there was one photo that was strikingly different and it had me sitting back with my hair on end."

The first sign it was different was the "horse-shaped face", which contrasted with the dog-shaped face of a deer, he said.

But the photo did not show enough detail to be sure, and he suspected it might actually be a deer, he said.

"I think this will always be a 'maybe'."

It could not be a half-moose, half-deer because the two species did not interbreed, he said.

Most people regarded the last official sighting of a moose to have been from 1952, but he had documented several more sightings since then in his history of the species in New Zealand, he said.

Mr Tustin said his "absorbing, compelling interest" in all things moose had begun during a stint working as a scientist in Fiordland.

He estimated a population of 20 moose could be wandering around the area – though that was a "total guess



By TOM FITZSIMONS - The Dominion Post

Outdoor tales: A beaver in a city cemetery and a moose out in the woods

By David Figura/The Post-Standard
May 16, 2010, 6:00AM

Ever heard of a beaver doing its business in a cemetery? I hadn’t until earlier this week when I received an email from Jim Aiello of Syracuse.

“ My wife and I were in the Oakwood Cemetery (near Syracuse University) on Monday evening around 6 p.m. and observed a beaver. There was another couple walking their dog and the husband took a photo with his cell,” Aiello said.

“ By the time I climbed out of my car and got my cell ready to also take a photo of the animal, it disappeared. By the way, the animal was pretty nonchalant with all of us, including the dog. It was just standing there.

“I went out yesterday afternoon and took a number of photos of the site and the surrounding area with a real camera; walking around to see if the animal’s handiwork could be found. I sent some of my photos to a friend of mine at SUNY ESF and he said that this is the first time in the 31 years he has been here that a beaver has been seen in the cemetery.

“You would expect to see one in the Erie (Canal) corridor — but in the cemetery?”

“In any case, my wife and I plan to go to the site to observe at dawn and dusk to see if the animal continues to ‘work’ the area because, as you know, this would be the best times for the animal to be above ground.”

The interesting part about Aiello’s account is that there’s no natural stream, marsh or waterway in the immediate area.

“The animal was (last) seen going into a drainage system,” he wrote.

Aiello, 66, at one time worked as the curator of education at the Burnet Park Zoo. He said it’s amazing how much wildlife lives in the city.

“I’ve been beaver off of Bridge Street. There’s a fox I see every morning on the way to the gym off Thompson Road by LeMoyne College,” he said. “And there’s deer all over the place.”

It was funny, he said, when he worked at the zoo, there was always people who’d call him after they’d seen a deer on the city’s west side.

“Oh, you have a deer loose,” they’d say.

Aiello said if you look at an aerial photo of the city, there’s a ribbon of green that wraps its way through it. That’s home to all sorts of animals, he said.

As for the beaver in the cemetery, Aiello promised to send me a photo once he snaps it.

MEMORABLE MOOSE

Schuyler Hellings, of Fayetteville, sent me the following account of a moose he saw recently in the Adirondacks:

“ I just wanted to relay a great experience while heading up to an annual canoe trip this year at Lake Lila with some high school buddies on April 29.

“We had stopped at one of the guy’s hunting camp outside of Speculator to check on it as we were nearby,” he wrote. “Pulling off of the dirt road onto Route 30 north from the camp to resume our trip, to all of our amazement was a moose standing in the middle of the highway!

“While I figured that I would see one sooner or later in my life, I thought it would be on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks or on the canoe trip we take every year in the ADK Park. While it was a good 60 to 75 yards away from the truck, we could see that the head clearly was taller than that of the cab of the truck (2005 Chevrolet K2500 4x4 pickup) and the shoulder higher than the hood.

“When the moose saw our truck, it loped into the woods but we were able to observe it for another five minutes or so.

“Murphy’s Law was at its finest as my cell phone camera decided to inform me then there was no more memory for pictures and another buddy who had dug out his digital camera got the dead battery light as he lined up a picture.

“My best estimate was that it was a cow. There were no nubs visible for antlers starting. I’ve hunted for a little over 11 years now. I spend a lot of time in the woods scouting for deer pre-season and do a fair amount of grouse hunting through post-deer season until February.

“I have seen many interesting and unusual things offered by Mother Nature. The sighting of this moose and watching it move among the hardwoods is clearly Number One in my book.”

http://blog.syracuse.com/outdoors/2010/05/outdoor_tales_a_beaver_in_a_ci.html

THE MOOSE IS OUT THERE . . . SOMEWHERE (via Paul Cropper)

THE MOOSE IS OUT THERE . . . SOMEWHERE
9 April 2010
The Southland Times

ONE hundred years on and moose in Fiordland live on - well, according to a South Otago-based moose hunter anyway. Ken Tustin, of Bull Creek, near Milton, is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the release of moose in Fiordland today with a book that details evidence of moose from the area.

The book, A (nearly) complete history of the moose in New Zealand, details encounters with moose in the fiords and the many sightings of the animal by hunters, trampers, fishermen and lighthouse keepers. The biologist had been collecting evidence and stories of moose in New Zealand for about 40 years and the book offered photo and DNA evidence from as recently as 15 years ago, he said.

"It was generally thought that the animals were extinct in the mid-30s but in the early 50s there were a number of individuals that shot and photographed the moose. So what it has is stories of people's sighting or shooting or someone that has seen a skeleton of the moose as proof," he said.

The stories about moose sightings, of which 60 were post-1960, had taken years to put together after tracking people down and then confirming their moose encounter story with a second source, Tustin said. "This book is firstly about moose, but it is also about a social history as it says what each person was doing down in the sounds at the same time."

The book will be in Southland book stores by April 15.
scot.mackay@stl.co.nz

Woman hit by falling moose head in bar

31 December 2009

A New York woman is suing a bar - after she suffered concussion when she was hit by a falling moose head.

Raina Kumra says she was minding her own business at the White Slab Palace on the Lower East Side when the stuffed head fell off a wall.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, her lawyer complained: "The taxidermy moose head weighed approximately 150lbs, with antlers spanning over three feet."

Ms Kumra says it caused her "chronic neck pain, anxiety, fatigue, dizziness and other serious and severe personal injuries," including "embarrassment".

Ms Kumra, an internet design consultant, declined to comment, reports the New York Post.

But the lawsuit says that since the incident, her "overall health, strength and vitality have been greatly impaired."

The suit seeks unspecified money damages from the bar for "failing to ensure that the plaintiff and other patrons of the defendants would not be struck by the loosely affixed... moose head".

The White Slab Palace is also declining to comment.

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/woman_hit_by_falling_moose_head_in_bar

The world's longest study of a predator-prey relationship

Trouble in nature's laboratory

The world's longest study of a predator-prey relationship has brought disturbing news. Should man intervene when nature makes it a struggle to survive?

By Tom Meersman, Star Tribune
October 28, 2009

PICTURED ABOVE: An adult moose weighs 700 to 1,000 pounds and munches 30 to 40 pounds of vegetation each day. This cow moose looked up while eating its noonday meal in a shallow pond on Isle Royale. Its calf was nearby. By Brian Peterson, Star Tribune.

ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK

Rolf Peterson held up his arm for silence and pointed through the thick brush.

A hundred yards off the trail, a female moose sporting a shiny new mahogany winter coat was knee-deep in muck, munching on plants. She raised her head nonchalantly, then flicked up her ears and froze as she spotted observers. After a long minute, she plodded up toward firmer ground. A calf popped out of the brush and trotted after her.

Research happens up close in the world's longest continuous study of predators and prey at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. Peterson has been watching and counting moose and wolves in this wilderness off Minnesota's North Shore for nearly 40 of the study's 51 years, in summer by foot and in winter by air.

Now that continuity is at a breaking point. The island's moose population is nearing a 50-year low, and what's bad for the moose is worse for the wolves that depend on them. Peterson can see the day when the wolves die out on Isle Royale, and scientists must confront far-reaching questions: Should we intervene to help the wolves survive, or let them die out and start again? What role should humans play to preserve an ecosystem?

Disrupting the extraordinary research has ramifications far beyond the wolves on Isle Royale.

Through the years, the study has provided unprecedented information about how long wolves live in the wild, and how much prey they kill. For wildlife managers around the world who want to reintroduce wolves into an ecosystem, as they have in the Yellowstone National Park area, the answers emerging from the Isle Royale research have been crucial to their efforts.

Big decisions will have to be made. "The risks for wolves seem to be pretty large and growing," Peterson said.

Outhouse and otters

Peterson and his wife, Candy, live and work out of a one-room log cabin built by Jack Bangsund, a Norwegian bachelor fisherman in 1931, the year Isle Royale became a national park. A Norwegian flag flutters outside the cabin in his honor. Under the cabin's slanting floor, otters have hollowed out space to sleep and squabble. Loons call from the waters of Rock Harbor just beyond the rickety dock.

The lifestyle marries the pioneer with the 21st century. There's no running water, and the outhouse is in the back. A sleek, vertical Finnish wind generator and a pair of solar panels power a couple of light bulbs -- and the computers hooked via satellite dish to the Internet.

Under a ceiling papered with moose posters, family photos and island maps, Peterson has based his summer field work since 1970 when he joined the wolf-moose study as a 21-year-old graduate student.

Now 60, Peterson has retired from a teaching career at Michigan Technological University, but has no plans to give up this study, the love of his life. Trim and fit, he backpacks and bushwhacks through alder and hazelnut bushes with the energy of someone half his age. He climbs a spindly ladder to the roof of an old fire lookout tower, grasping a portable antenna to check signals from radio-collared wolves. It's an iconic scene of a field scientist in a goofy sunhat leaning into the wind, listening for beeps and watching a meter with experienced blue eyes.

Science without a rival

Isle Royale is an ideal outdoor laboratory. About 22 miles off the shore of northeastern Minnesota, its remote location makes it difficult to reach even in summer, when most visitors arrive by boat. Its terrain is a rugged mix of parallel valleys and rocky ridges, as if a giant claw scraped across its surface, as a glacier did 8,000 years ago. With no roads, no hunting and almost no human presence, it's a magnet for scientists to study plants and wildlife.

The moose-wolf study began in 1958. Durward Allen of Purdue University spent a decade learning how the two species seemed to be in balance, with each growing or declining at approximately the same rates. But that neat balance soon got messy, and the populations spiked and plunged over the decades with changes in snow depth, vegetation, diseases, parasites, higher summer temperatures and shorter winters.

By studying how much wolves prey on moose, said John Vucetich, research co-leader with Peterson, scientists can help answer a longstanding question of interest to sportsmen. "When we live with wolves, wherever it may be, we have to be concerned about the fact that they eat animals that humans also like to hunt" such as elk and deer, Vucetich said.

"In terms of the value of that study to science, nothing else rivals it," said Mark Romanski, biologist and acting chief scientist at Isle Royale National Park.

The park service contributes about $36,000 annually to Peterson's research, the National Science Foundation funds $90,000, and individuals and a small endowment provide about $25,000.

Collapse of a pack

Peterson's field station, while visually idyllic, doesn't always smell so good. Part of his research is to collect the carcasses of wolves and the skulls and other body parts of moose. A hand-made sign in front of bones collected in 2009 explains why studying the bones is important: "When they get old, moose exhibit arthritis, periodontal disease, osteoporosis. Sound familiar?"

Wolf skeletons became especially significant after a Swedish researcher discovered three years ago that Isle Royale wolves have a spinal deformity that's a sign of inbreeding, Peterson said. The park service is planning a scientific review.

One day last month Peterson cooked the carcass of a female wolf that died trying to give birth to eight pups last spring. He wore protective gloves and glasses as he lifted the skull from a boiling cauldron. He plunked the grisly mess on a picnic table, wrinkled his face at the odor, and tried to pull muscles, tendons and tongue away from the skull.

"Not done enough yet," he said, returning it to the cooker.

The death of this one female meant the collapse of an entire pack -- one of four on the island. The pack had lost several members in recent years, and by early 2009 contained only one male and one female. Her death and that of her unborn pups were the pack's last hope for regeneration.

Wolves have struggled to survive since the 1980s, when a domestic dog brought illegally to the island spread canine parvovirus. Their numbers dropped from a peak of 50 to 14 in two years, and have never fully recovered.

The current populations of about 24 wolves and 530 moose are close to what they were 50 winters ago, Peterson said, but each is at risk.

The wolves have lost more than half of their genetic variability compared with wolves on the mainland, he said. Moose are being stressed by higher summer temperatures that cause them to eat less, produce less fat for winter survival and die of starvation, Vucetich said.

Moose are also plagued by life-threatening ticks that have multiplied in the rising temperatures.

"Climate change is certainly an additional pressure, and it's the big one," Peterson said.

Night howls and spirits

So far the Park Service tradition has been not to intervene. "Our policy is basically to let nature take its course," Romanski said.

But the prospect of the wolves' extinction is forcing a new look at that policy. "It's not just a science-based decision," Romanski said. "It's a blend of science and stewardship and conservation that will have to be addressed."

For Michael Nelson, associate professor of environmental ethics at Michigan State University: "It's a moral question of should we genetically rescue this population or not, and how should we interact with these wolves." He is writing a history of the wolf-moose study.

Scientific value cuts both ways, Nelson said. There is value in making sure that the wolves do not disappear so that the study can continue. But there would also be value in letting the wolves die out and studying how their absence affects moose populations, forest growth and other wildlife.

Backpackers on the island last month had mixed feelings about the future of wolves there. The hikers were tanned, rumpled and clutching mugs of steaming coffee as they departed Isle Royale on a windy day. Voyageur II, a 60-foot aluminum diesel cruiser, bucked three-foot swells on the trip back to the North Shore.

"It doesn't matter about the wolves and moose," said June Huffman of Zion, Ill., who was finishing her third trip to the park. "It's an interesting thing, but not the whole reason to come here. You come for the beauty and the solitude."

Dennis Nelson of Stillwater begged to differ. "As far as the experience here, the expectation or hope that you might see a wolf or a moose is part of the draw to come here."

Whatever the future brings, Peterson knows that the island is not as remote or protected as he once believed. "I sort of gave up the notion that parks are undisturbed sanctuaries that we can just stand back and watch," he said. But Peterson clings to the belief that in a place as wild as Isle Royale, man should strive to intervene as little as possible. He's in no rush to rescue the wolves quite yet, although it may soon become necessary to do so.

If the 51-year-old study proves anything, he said, it's that ecology is so complicated and unpredictable that people should be cautious about thinking they can manage it.

"Someone once said that nature is not more complex than we thought, it's more complex than we can think," he said.

http://www.startribune.com/local/65885332.html?elr=KArksUUUycaEacyU

(Submitted by D.R. Shoop)

The world's longest study of a predator-prey relationship

Trouble in nature's laboratory

The world's longest study of a predator-prey relationship has brought disturbing news. Should man intervene when nature makes it a struggle to survive?

By Tom Meersman, Star Tribune
October 28, 2009

PICTURED ABOVE: An adult moose weighs 700 to 1,000 pounds and munches 30 to 40 pounds of vegetation each day. This cow moose looked up while eating its noonday meal in a shallow pond on Isle Royale. Its calf was nearby. By Brian Peterson, Star Tribune.

ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK

Rolf Peterson held up his arm for silence and pointed through the thick brush.

A hundred yards off the trail, a female moose sporting a shiny new mahogany winter coat was knee-deep in muck, munching on plants. She raised her head nonchalantly, then flicked up her ears and froze as she spotted observers. After a long minute, she plodded up toward firmer ground. A calf popped out of the brush and trotted after her.

Research happens up close in the world's longest continuous study of predators and prey at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. Peterson has been watching and counting moose and wolves in this wilderness off Minnesota's North Shore for nearly 40 of the study's 51 years, in summer by foot and in winter by air.

Now that continuity is at a breaking point. The island's moose population is nearing a 50-year low, and what's bad for the moose is worse for the wolves that depend on them. Peterson can see the day when the wolves die out on Isle Royale, and scientists must confront far-reaching questions: Should we intervene to help the wolves survive, or let them die out and start again? What role should humans play to preserve an ecosystem?

Disrupting the extraordinary research has ramifications far beyond the wolves on Isle Royale.

Through the years, the study has provided unprecedented information about how long wolves live in the wild, and how much prey they kill. For wildlife managers around the world who want to reintroduce wolves into an ecosystem, as they have in the Yellowstone National Park area, the answers emerging from the Isle Royale research have been crucial to their efforts.

Big decisions will have to be made. "The risks for wolves seem to be pretty large and growing," Peterson said.

Outhouse and otters

Peterson and his wife, Candy, live and work out of a one-room log cabin built by Jack Bangsund, a Norwegian bachelor fisherman in 1931, the year Isle Royale became a national park. A Norwegian flag flutters outside the cabin in his honor. Under the cabin's slanting floor, otters have hollowed out space to sleep and squabble. Loons call from the waters of Rock Harbor just beyond the rickety dock.

The lifestyle marries the pioneer with the 21st century. There's no running water, and the outhouse is in the back. A sleek, vertical Finnish wind generator and a pair of solar panels power a couple of light bulbs -- and the computers hooked via satellite dish to the Internet.

Under a ceiling papered with moose posters, family photos and island maps, Peterson has based his summer field work since 1970 when he joined the wolf-moose study as a 21-year-old graduate student.

Now 60, Peterson has retired from a teaching career at Michigan Technological University, but has no plans to give up this study, the love of his life. Trim and fit, he backpacks and bushwhacks through alder and hazelnut bushes with the energy of someone half his age. He climbs a spindly ladder to the roof of an old fire lookout tower, grasping a portable antenna to check signals from radio-collared wolves. It's an iconic scene of a field scientist in a goofy sunhat leaning into the wind, listening for beeps and watching a meter with experienced blue eyes.

Science without a rival

Isle Royale is an ideal outdoor laboratory. About 22 miles off the shore of northeastern Minnesota, its remote location makes it difficult to reach even in summer, when most visitors arrive by boat. Its terrain is a rugged mix of parallel valleys and rocky ridges, as if a giant claw scraped across its surface, as a glacier did 8,000 years ago. With no roads, no hunting and almost no human presence, it's a magnet for scientists to study plants and wildlife.

The moose-wolf study began in 1958. Durward Allen of Purdue University spent a decade learning how the two species seemed to be in balance, with each growing or declining at approximately the same rates. But that neat balance soon got messy, and the populations spiked and plunged over the decades with changes in snow depth, vegetation, diseases, parasites, higher summer temperatures and shorter winters.

By studying how much wolves prey on moose, said John Vucetich, research co-leader with Peterson, scientists can help answer a longstanding question of interest to sportsmen. "When we live with wolves, wherever it may be, we have to be concerned about the fact that they eat animals that humans also like to hunt" such as elk and deer, Vucetich said.

"In terms of the value of that study to science, nothing else rivals it," said Mark Romanski, biologist and acting chief scientist at Isle Royale National Park.

The park service contributes about $36,000 annually to Peterson's research, the National Science Foundation funds $90,000, and individuals and a small endowment provide about $25,000.

Collapse of a pack

Peterson's field station, while visually idyllic, doesn't always smell so good. Part of his research is to collect the carcasses of wolves and the skulls and other body parts of moose. A hand-made sign in front of bones collected in 2009 explains why studying the bones is important: "When they get old, moose exhibit arthritis, periodontal disease, osteoporosis. Sound familiar?"

Wolf skeletons became especially significant after a Swedish researcher discovered three years ago that Isle Royale wolves have a spinal deformity that's a sign of inbreeding, Peterson said. The park service is planning a scientific review.

One day last month Peterson cooked the carcass of a female wolf that died trying to give birth to eight pups last spring. He wore protective gloves and glasses as he lifted the skull from a boiling cauldron. He plunked the grisly mess on a picnic table, wrinkled his face at the odor, and tried to pull muscles, tendons and tongue away from the skull.

"Not done enough yet," he said, returning it to the cooker.

The death of this one female meant the collapse of an entire pack -- one of four on the island. The pack had lost several members in recent years, and by early 2009 contained only one male and one female. Her death and that of her unborn pups were the pack's last hope for regeneration.

Wolves have struggled to survive since the 1980s, when a domestic dog brought illegally to the island spread canine parvovirus. Their numbers dropped from a peak of 50 to 14 in two years, and have never fully recovered.

The current populations of about 24 wolves and 530 moose are close to what they were 50 winters ago, Peterson said, but each is at risk.

The wolves have lost more than half of their genetic variability compared with wolves on the mainland, he said. Moose are being stressed by higher summer temperatures that cause them to eat less, produce less fat for winter survival and die of starvation, Vucetich said.

Moose are also plagued by life-threatening ticks that have multiplied in the rising temperatures.

"Climate change is certainly an additional pressure, and it's the big one," Peterson said.

Night howls and spirits

So far the Park Service tradition has been not to intervene. "Our policy is basically to let nature take its course," Romanski said.

But the prospect of the wolves' extinction is forcing a new look at that policy. "It's not just a science-based decision," Romanski said. "It's a blend of science and stewardship and conservation that will have to be addressed."

For Michael Nelson, associate professor of environmental ethics at Michigan State University: "It's a moral question of should we genetically rescue this population or not, and how should we interact with these wolves." He is writing a history of the wolf-moose study.

Scientific value cuts both ways, Nelson said. There is value in making sure that the wolves do not disappear so that the study can continue. But there would also be value in letting the wolves die out and studying how their absence affects moose populations, forest growth and other wildlife.

Backpackers on the island last month had mixed feelings about the future of wolves there. The hikers were tanned, rumpled and clutching mugs of steaming coffee as they departed Isle Royale on a windy day. Voyageur II, a 60-foot aluminum diesel cruiser, bucked three-foot swells on the trip back to the North Shore.

"It doesn't matter about the wolves and moose," said June Huffman of Zion, Ill., who was finishing her third trip to the park. "It's an interesting thing, but not the whole reason to come here. You come for the beauty and the solitude."

Dennis Nelson of Stillwater begged to differ. "As far as the experience here, the expectation or hope that you might see a wolf or a moose is part of the draw to come here."

Whatever the future brings, Peterson knows that the island is not as remote or protected as he once believed. "I sort of gave up the notion that parks are undisturbed sanctuaries that we can just stand back and watch," he said. But Peterson clings to the belief that in a place as wild as Isle Royale, man should strive to intervene as little as possible. He's in no rush to rescue the wolves quite yet, although it may soon become necessary to do so.

If the 51-year-old study proves anything, he said, it's that ecology is so complicated and unpredictable that people should be cautious about thinking they can manage it.

"Someone once said that nature is not more complex than we thought, it's more complex than we can think," he said.

http://www.startribune.com/local/65885332.html?elr=KArksUUUycaEacyU

(Submitted by D.R. Shoop)