Mary Beth Pfeiffer writes:

In the tally of species that will evolve or perish as temperatures rise, now consider the moose. The lumbering king of the deer family, known for antlers that can span six feet like giant outstretched fingers, the moose faces a litany of survival threats, from wolves and bears to brain worms and liver fluke parasites. But in the late 1990s in many northern states and Canada, something else began to claim adult cows and bull moose and, in even greater numbers, their single or twin calves.

Lee Kantar is the moose biologist for the state of Maine, which means that he makes a living climbing the rugged terrain of north-central Maine when a GPS collar indicates a moose has died. A lean man with a prominent salt-and-pepper moustache who wears flannel shirts and jeans to work, Kantar tagged 60 moose in January of 2014 around Moosehead Lake in the Maine Highlands. By the end of that year, 12 adults and 22 calves were dead – 57 per cent of the group. When biologists examined the carcasses, they found what they thought was the cause. Calves not even a year old harboured up to 60,000 blood-sucking arthropods known as winter ticks. In Vermont, dead moose were turning up with 100,000 ticks – each. In New Hampshire, the moose population had dropped from 7,500 to 4,500 from the 1990s to 2014, the emaciated bodies of cows, bulls and calves bearing similar infestations of ticks. These magnificent animals were literally being bled to death. [Continue reading…]