There is some good news and some bad news in the moose world.
The Ministry of Natural Resources had an excellent year for aerial population surveys. They got 21 WMUs and 600 plots done. That’s almost like it was when I was working. With helicopter rates at $1,300 a plot, plus the cost of food and lodging for the crews, that’s probably a million dollars this year.
The other good news is that the population appears to be increasing in several zones. Before MNR takes credit and claims that their management is successful, I would like to offer some caveats.
Some of the increase may be the technique I use of extrapolating estimates between surveys, flat-lining estimates since the last survey, then adding the individual WMU estimates. A number of the units had not been surveyed for six or seven years.
New, higher estimates will affect all intervening years. It is unlikely that the population in the Northeastern Zone (NEZ) ― the area in the Wawa, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, North Bay corridor ― increased nearly 50 per cent in seven years. This may be the result of the updated aerial survey technique, or that the last surveys in some units were very low and the population had not declined as much as indicated.
This zone alone accounts for most of the provincial increase. I can’t really address the situation in the Northern Zone (NZ) because I’m not familiar with that area.
I am reasonably certain that the increase in the Northwestern Zone (NWZ) is real, although it is still small. It has nothing to do with the harvest control program. It has more to do with deer.
The deer population in the moose range, as represented by the harvest, has declined in the last decade. This information comes from the Data Catalogue available to everyone online (as are the moose population surveys and some other stuff). Deer harvest estimates prior to 2008 were not included because the survey technique changed (different sample sizes, information from controlled hunts now included?).
This is not directly related to the story, but I have written about MNR’s poor information system. Failing to provide complete deer harvest information is just another example. As Aldous Huxley, the English writer and philosopher, said, “Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.” Whoever posted the data failed to recognize that the estimate of the deer harvest is “THE estimate of the deer harvest”, no matter how it is collected.
Changes can be included in the dataset, in this case by having columns for the regular harvest, the controlled deer harvest, and the total harvest. The regular harvest information can then extend back as far as it exists. Let users decide what information is relevant rather than someone dictating what the public can have access to ― especially under a government policy of open access to information.
The moose figure below is an example of what a graph for deer should look like. Although there are at least three different survey techniques, and survey areas changed at least four times, the trend information is pretty clear.
If there is doubt, it can be further validated by including hunting license sales. Money matters are recorded by meticulous accountants, not biologists. Whether the historical information is accurate or not, compared to current standards, is irrelevant. Managers should be planning for the future, not dwelling on past problems. The past is still important to understand the history of the program, even if it is imperfect.
There is a recorded history of deer hunting that goes back to the 1950s, exactly the same as moose. Even though it was in paper documents or computer printouts until the 1980s or 1990s, it should be digitized and incorporated in the data (as I did with the moose information) and included in the data catalogue. I’m sure there are summer students who would be happy to undertake that task. Redirecting money from a few aerial inventory plots would go a long way to creating useful deer harvest data. A few more might capture all relevant information for all species.
So, back to moose in the NWZ. Because of a number of severe winters, the deer population, again as measured by the harvest, has declined substantially, much more than in any other zone. At the time of my retirement in 2001, a lot of dead moose were being reported, ostensibly because of brain worm carried by deer. Unfortunately, the system to record that type information was abandoned about 2000, and the data either lost or never entered.
With the decline in deer, moose were less subject to parasites, reducing mortality and allowing them to increase. There are two things to note in the deer chart above.
The first is that the decline in deer is much greater in the northwest than elswhere. Historically, it was second only to Algonquin Park in deer production. The other, of interest, but not really relevant to the story, is that the deer harvest in Algonquin is nearly ten times what it is in the other zones.
It had to go on the provincial axis because it made the other zones look like flat lines in comparison. In many respects, it is THE provincial deer harvest, at least within the moose range. The green line is from the Northern Zone, the northern limit of deer range. There are pockets (WMSs) with good deer habitat and many years with open season.
With a warming climate, a number of new seasons have been added in recent years. Several have fewer than a hundred hunters and single digit harvests (some being zero). It is imperative that MNR squeeze every possible tag/opportunity out of our resources. Note that there is no “harvestable surplus” when a species is on the edge of its range, so this is not a good management practice.
There are three pieces of bad news. The first is that the population in the North Central Zone (NCZ) continues to decline. Historically, it was one of the most important areas for moose in the province. The recent decline is mainly due to two units: 21A dropped from 2,888 in 2018, to 1,933 (31 per cent in seven years), and 21B dropped from 2,346 in 2020, to 1,888 (19.5 per cent in four years).
The second is that the population in Unit 13 has not responded to extreme cuts in tags, from 1,250 in 2013, to less than 200 thereafter. In fact, the population has continued to decline from 2,600 in 2014 to 1,700 in 2022.
This unit is in a “predator pit” as I have cautioned about in other articles. The population is sufficiently low that “predators” remove enough animals each year to prevent it from rebounding as is typical of predator-prey cycles. This is the first evidence I’ve seen that it already exists in Ontario. It is a warning of what will happen in other units if the harvest is not effectively controlled.
MNR initiated a project to study this unit last year. I had thought it was to discover why the population was declining (although there is clear evidence that hunting is likely the major controllable factor). The purpose is to study why it is not increasing. It will be a very important study. I’m really looking forward to the results.
With total tags set to 50 this year, and a probable harvest of only 25 moose ― down from 700 between the mid-1970s and early 1990s ― hunting is functionally stopped in Unit 13. There are only three probable outcomes. They are predation, disease and subsistence hunting. Addressing any of them will be a major challenge for Ontario managers, especially when they can’t manage such a simple thing as harvest control.
Finally, last year’s hunt followed the trend in recent years. Hunters and harvest were down again in 2024. The harvests over the past few years suggest that the population is probably stable. It has not increased as the calf-cow harvest replacement strategy following the 2019 review promised. It will never increase if that strategy is continued.
Only 92 per cent of hunters responded to mandatory reporting, a loss of two per cent. That’s a pretty small number for a tool that is supposed to provide 100-per-cent accuracy on the harvest (if everyone is honest).
I would describe it as a major failure and a sign of the respect that hunters have for MNR laws. Frankly, I don’t blame them. What is really required is a voluntary reporting system that is understood and supported by hunters because they know it is their own interest to report honestly. I really don’t think that MNR has the capability to achieve that.
Calves were 14 per cent of the harvest while cows amounted to 29 per cent, exactly the opposite of what it should be if the Scandinavian model were followed. A recent scientific publication on moose at “low density equilibrium”, which appears to be the situation in Ontario, suggests that harvests need to be below 2.3 per cent for stability.
Last year, the Ontario harvest was four per cent of the population, if you believe the increase in the northeast is real. This does show that signs of success should not be expected soon, and it will get worse if things don’t change, and units like 13 become the norm.
I was recently in Sweden to give several presents on the Ontario’s moose management program at the International Moose Symposium. Brian McLaren, professor of natural resources management at Lakehead University, was the co-author of the papers.
The presentation was not about how the population inventory program changed to give misleading information about a possible increase in the population, or how MNR has ignored its own harvest assessment information and continued to plan excessive harvests and offer too many tags. They were used as examples, but the papers were about the importance of building a complete and effective management “system”, starting with good management information.
That system would include such things as deer population information (as a vector of disease), wildfires (to predict habitat quality), winter severity (as a way to adjust harvest for poor calf survival) and a system to record mortality by factors other than recreational hunting (mainly motor vehicle accidents, disease, predation and subsistence hunting). With these factors included, even in a visual, if not statistical form, very sophisticated management strategies are possible. It would also include First Nations as co-managers, and others in the decision making process.
One conclusion of the presentation was that if hunting continues to be a dominant and uncontrolled factor affecting moose, then collecting any information for management purposes is a waste of time and resources. A million-dollar population inventory will not lead to better management decisions. It will only document the extirpation of moose in Ontario ― at a very high price. Yes, you can read that in several ways.
Alan Bisset is a retired regional moose biologist and wildlife inventory program leader with the former Ministry of Natural Resources. He has written and published many papers on moose management, both Internally and in scientific journals. Bisset lives in Strathroy, west of London, Ontario. You can find his other submissions by typing “Alan Bisset” into the search bar at Sudbury.com.