Today's Denver Post
reports that a young bull moose has been roaming a subdivision in Parker (maybe 10 miles northwest of us) for the last two weeks. CPW and law enforcement are keeping an eye on him in hopes of keeping him out of trouble. Click through the Post link for more pictures. I really wonder where he came from and why he decided to come way out here. We don't have that many moose in the state, much less in the Front Range.
In fact, moose had been extinct in the state in the 20th century prior to the transplanting of a herd from Wyoming into North Park (Jackson County) in the late 1970s. I was running a survey in North Park in 1978 and remember watching them helicopter-lift moose into an area near where we were working.
They have done well here. Here is a picture I took of one up on Cameron Pass two years ago.
UPDATE
This morning's Denver Post (30 October 2013) reports that yesterday CPW had successfully tranquilized our visitor and were transporting him to western Douglas County, i.e. the Rampart Range foothills and Pike National Forest. The article said they had tranquilized him near the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Jordan Road, which are large busy streets no moose should be around.
1 comment:
My native state of Connecticut has had a fairly similar experience with moose. The first confirmed sighting was in the mid-1950's, and there were only a handful more over the next couple of decades, but then the pace increased. By the late 1980's sightings were so common that it was clear moose were regular migrants in the state. The first breeding population was established about 20 years ago, and today there are an estimated 150 to 200 moose in Connecticut.
Peter
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