September + October 2019 ADIRONDACK LIFE 45Clinton, Franklin and St. Lawrence Coun-
ties. “It’s got a lot of wetlands and a lot
of timber harvesting going on and a high
percentage of conifers.”
Companies that engage in sustainable
forestry in the Adirondacks count on the
regrowth of trees for continued reve-
nue. An adult moose can munch 40 to 60
pounds of twigs, leaves and buds a day,
favoring birches, maples, balsam fir and
mountain ash. They also strip and eat the
bark from young trees.
“We are starting to hear that on some
of these conservation easement lands,
the level of browsing is getting to the
point where it is impacting some of the
regeneration,” Jensen said. “We want to
meet with some of these timber compa-
nies to get a handle on their concerns and
the damage they are seeing.”
The history of moose in New York and
the Northeast is intimately tied to the
history of trees. The animal’s demise in
the 1800s resulted from habitat loss, spe-
cifically deforestation and the rise of agri-
culture. Trophy hunters played a role too.
A number of men claimed to have taken
the last moose in the Adirondacks. One
such boast was made by Ransom Palmer,
a Civil War soldier who reported killing
the last native moose in 1861.
Today moose are present in the bore-
al forests of North America, from Alaska
all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. In New
York, they are now found mainly in the
Adirondacks and the Taconic Highlands,
along the state’s border with Massachu-
setts and Vermont. Even though moose
were largely wiped out across the North-
east in the 19th century, one population
remained, in northern Maine. It was a
forest pest—the spruce budworm—that
led to the animal’s comeback in New
England in recent decades and, to a lesser
extent, in New York.
According to Peter J. Pekins, a profes-
sor of ecology at the University of New
Hampshire who studies moose, the bud-
worm was the catalyst for the rapid har-
vest of fir and spruce trees in Maine start-
ing in the 1970s, as timber companies
raced to salvage what they could. Since
the sheep pastures of Vermont and New
Hampshire had long since reverted toforest, the stage was set for the moose’s
expansion. “In a decade, the timber
companies basically created moose nir-
vana,” he said. “The remnant population
of moose in Maine exploded and spread
throughout New England.”
Pekins’s research has focused largely
on winter tick, which has hurt moose
populations in New Hampshire and
Maine. Climate change, he said, has given
the tick a longer window in which to
latch onto moose before winter sets in. In
New Hampshire, which has about 5,000
moose, he has seen individual calves cov-
ered with as many as 97,000 ticks. The
ticks grow to the size of grapes when
they become engorged with the moose’s
blood. The infestation leads to blood
loss and anemia. As a result, some 70
percent of calves he has helped study in
New Hampshire and parts of Maine have
died in four of the last five years. “It is
really just devastating to watch the vast
majority of your calves die every year,”
he said. “Essentially, they get taken out
by 100,000 vampires. When they die in
late March and April, they lose 20 percent
of their body weight. They are skin and
bones and covered head to toe in ticks.
Until you see it, you can’t believe it.”
Scientists in New York have seen
some winter tick, but not in numbers that
threaten moose. (Brain worm is a great-
er concern.) Because of the forever-wild
provisions across much of the Adiron-
dacks, winter ticks may never rise to a
level where they pose a risk. Parasites
such as ticks need large host populations
in order to thrive. But without large-scale
timber harvesting, the number of moose
in the Adirondacks is unlikely to grow
substantially. That, in turn, should keep
winter ticks at bay.
State biologists are starting to appre-
ciate the “small is beautiful” concept.
“The contractors we work with on col-
laring moose remark how healthy and
robust our animals look,” said Jensen, of
the DEC. “In some ways, the fact that our
moose population is at a lower density
may be a really good thing.”Lisa W. Foderaro was a reporter for The New
York Times for more than 30 years. She has
also written for National Geographic and
Audubon magazines.RANSOM PALMER, A CIVIL
WAR SOLDIER, REPORTED
KILLING THE LAST NATIVE
MOOSE IN 1861.
Cow near Cascade Ski
Center, in Lake Placid.
FACING PAGE: In the
Adirondacks scat and
incisor scrapings are
often the only signs of
these elusive creatures.