This is a keystone study that BC Game Managers have ignored as they do not reference this work in any of theirs. In 1997 when asked by Dr. Ian McTaggart Cowan to show Jon Lykke, a Norwegian moose management biologist and graduate student some of BC’s best moose habitat, I obliged by inviting him on a flight over the lower Finlay River area of the Rocky Mountain Trench prior to it being flooded the following year. On a direct flight over the shallow water of Ospika Swamp in mid-June, 1967, we counted 181 moose. They were cows with calves in a safe haven away from wolves and bears when calves are most vulnerable. He commented enthusiastically on seeing his first moose refugium. He also explained a successful forest-moose management program in central Norway that had been in use for over a decade and the remarkable results that were achieved.
The essential elements of the program are as follows:
-Abundant shrub food supplies created by clear-cutting as a major timber harvest practice.
-The almost total absence of predation by wolves and brown bearsHarvesting younger animals;
-70% of the harvest were calves, one and two and a half year olds, the remainder a 30% mix of older bulls and cows.
-Access also an important factor in effectively distributing hunters throughout the management area.
This method of moose management was also applied throughout Fenno-scandanavia with outstanding results. For example, in 1982 Swedish hunters harvested 174,000 moose. Over populations of moose were a serious threat to forest crops by browsing economically important coniferous species. Presently moose populations and harvests are much lower but remain very high by NA standards. This abundance was threatened in 1995 by EU bureaucrats insisting that wolf and brown bear populations in member countries return to pre-determined numbers. It was also resisted by moose hunters as a strong hunting tradition persists across Fenno-scandanavia. Recently, the Norwegian government announced a heavy wolf cull beginning this winter 2021-22 to protect livestock and valuable hunting dogs from being killed by wolves during the hunting season. The cull in the Wolf Protection Zone will limit the surviving population to no more than three pairs and wolves outside the zone will also be culled heavily. Sweden and Finland are also taking strong measures to reduce their wolf populations.
-Ken Sumanik, RPBio, MSc(Zool)
link to the study below:
moose Selective Harvest Management of a Norwegian Moose Population; Jon Lykke, 2005