Hunt moose to save caribou?

[GunMunKey]

Check out this article in the NY Times and let me know what you think.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/science/moose-wolves-caribou.amp.html

I'm not buying it but I'd like to hear from two groups of people on this. Firstly, anyone here in BC have a moose population 16:1 better than white tail? And the second could any southern native let me know if your ancestors didn't know what a moose was. I wrote an email to the PhD from the University of Alberta that is quoted in the article and expressed my doubts about the accuracy of his information. Here is his reply:

Southern BC First Nations bands had no historic word for moose. The northeast BC and Alberta Bands all do of course (ie boreal forest bands).#
If you've ever been north of Revelstoke you'd know that moose far outnumber WT deer. Every hunter knows that.
Robert Serrouya.

He responds quickly to emails so feel free to direct questions regarding this matter to him. I also wrote to NY Times but have not received a response. Am I the dumbass here? Feel free to answer that honestly.

 

[Kenny_G2]

Ontario has adopted this science for years. It is part of the reason for the moose herd reduction across the northern part of the province.

 

[GunMunKey]

And is the strategy working?

 

[Species8472]

And is the strategy working?

Doubt it. My anecdotal take is we have less moose and the caribou numbers continue to drop. There used to be a small herd of woodland caribou in Pukaskwa NP on the east shore of Superior but I think they have essentially disappeared in spite of the moose reduction efforts in the area.

 

[hunter7mmRM]

Yeah somehow someone has come up with the idea that reducing moose numbers will cause wolves to starve due to less moose and then somehow the caribou number will come up. I had no idea that wolves would rather starve than eat caribou.

 

[TheTooner]

Yeah somehow someone has come up with the idea that reducing moose numbers will cause wolves to starve due to less moose and then somehow the caribou number will come up. I had no idea that wolves would rather starve than eat caribou.

I don't think the wolves have heard of this, either.

 

[horshur]

if'n they had this plan maybe the Mammoth wouldn't gone extinct also....

 

[bearkilr]

"It also reduced the wolves, which dispersed from the area and had fewer babies."

That's cute. Wolves have "babies". How adorable.

 

[GunMunKey]

Yeah somehow someone has come up with the idea that reducing moose numbers will cause wolves to starve due to less moose and then somehow the caribou number will come up. I had no idea that wolves would rather starve than eat caribou.

Lol yeah they won't touch elk or deer either.

 

[altaberg]

This is a ten-year study comparing two areas and in one there was a lot of additional moose hunting.
Seems that in ten years moose numbers and wolf numbers went down in the high hunting pressure area and the caribou population stabilized.

Moose aren't native to those areas anyways.

So this seems to be a pretty good approach, increase hunting of a species that doesn't belong there anyways and hopefully caribou populations will stabilize.

The study is based on ten years of data. If the interpretation and causality is completely correct or not, doesn't necessarily matter.

Plus more hunting opportunity.