Dogs helping scientists understand moose population

By MIKE LYNCH, Enterprise Outdoor Writer
TUPPER LAKE — Walking through the brush, Wicket, a jet-black dog, had its nose to the ground and its tail wagging when suddenly the animal stopped and sat.

The game was over. Wicket had just found moose scat.

Now the dog wanted its reward, a red ball, which its handler, Aimee Hurt, gladly placed in its mouth.

Wicket is part of a pilot program in the Adirondacks that scientists hope will give them a better understanding of the growing moose population here.

Wicket has been trained by Working Dogs for Conservation, a Montana-based organization that has trained dogs to find the scat of grizzly bears, mountain lions and desert turtles as well as invasive and rare plants.

“Their ability to discriminate (between smells) is mind boggling,” handler Alice Whitelaw said to a crowd of scientists and journalists in a field outside Tupper Lake Thursday.

This past winter, the dogs were trained in Montana on moose scat gathered in the Adirondack Park by scientists and volunteers. They are part of a project called AROMA, or Adirondack Return of Moose Assessment, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Natural Museum of the Adirondacks.

Now the dogs will spend the next two weeks roaming areas of the Park where moose populations are believed to be high. Much of the field work is being done here in the north-central Adirondacks.

“Our goals for this work are to test a relatively new, noninvasive study technique in this landscape, and to gather some fundamental information about the Adirondack moose population in the process,” WCS ecologist Michale Glennon said. “Although moose are an iconic species and have made a remarkable comeback here over the last few decades, the scientific community still does not have a great handle on some very basic questions for this species.”

The moose-scat expeditions, which have started successfully this week, include scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, a photographer who is documenting the project for The Wild Center, a wildlife techician from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, dog handlers and orienteers.

In the field, the dogs search for “a cone of scent” emanating from the source — in this case moose scat. Factors such as wind, terrain and humidity all determine how well the dog can pick up the smell.

Once the animals find the scat, they plop their backsides on the earth and wait for their handler, who gives them a red ball, the reward they are trained to receive.

Once the scat is collected, scientists can send it to labs for testing. A diet analysis can be done to determine what the moose is eating, thus giving researchers clues about the moose’s habitat and home range.

A nutritional analysis can be done to determine the health of the moose. By studying endocrine extracted from the scat, researchers can determine the sex and reproductive status of individual animals. DNA anaylses can verify sex and potentially determine population size.

Moose have become a target of more research recently because many scientists believe the population is nearing a potential explosion.

Currently, there are an estimated 300 to 500 moose in the Adirondacks, but there has been anecdotal evidence that the population has began to breed. If that is the case, the population could grow exponentially.

WCS scientist Heidi Kretser compared the moose population in the Adirondack Park to that of New Hampshire. That state’s estimated moose population was 25 in the 1950s, 1,600 in the 1980s and 9,600 in 1998.

The Adirondack Park’s estimated population was 25 in the 1980s and now is several hundred strong.

“There is no reason to think we couldn’t make the jump in population,” said Kretser, noting that there have been more reports of moose cows with twins, a sign that indicates there is abundant habitat here.

But because the moose population has been low for decades, little research has been done to study them.

WCS has partnered with the DEC on a survey of hunters to learn about moose sightings and has appealed to the public on its Web site. The DEC does winter surveys in helicopters, and has put radio collars on animals that have wandered out of the forests into non-moose-friendly habitats such as industrial parks outside of Albany. But there has been no concentrated effort to come up with a method to understand the population as a whole.

“In the future, the idea is to do a more systemic, larger-scale study to get a population size,” Glennon said. “This is more the pilot test of that.”

But Wild Center Managing Director Stephanie Ratcliffe sees this project as more than just research oriented. She envisions it as a method for educating people about moose.

For that reason, The Wild Center is co-sponsoring the project with WCS. The museum will be documenting the project and creating an exhibit.

“As a culture, we need to understand it; lay people that read the results of science need to understand the process of science,” Ratcliffe said. “It makes us better consumers of that information.”

Contact Mike Lynch at 891-2600 ext. 28 or at mlynch@adirondckdailyenterprise.com.