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#Moose

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Levka

#moose #ClimateChange #NewHampshire

"Every fall, winter ticks in New England sit on shrubs or other plants waiting for a large animal to pass by so they can latch on and begin sucking out blood. This has a huge impact on the area’s moose, wildlife biologists say.

'They basically become zombies and die,' Eric Orff, a New Hampshire-based wildlife biologist, said. 'We have zombie moose.'

According to estimates from New Hampshire Fish and Game, the Granite State’s moose population peaked in the late 1990s at around 7,000 to 8,000 moose. It has since declined to roughly 3,000 to 4,000.

Most tick species move from host to host frequently, but winter ticks find a moose, deer, or other animal around November and extract their blood for the entirety of winter. And it’s not just one or a couple ticks on each host. Rather, hundreds or thousands of ticks often latch onto a host. This is a process called questing and it has a huge effect on moose, particularly calves.

'April is the month of death for calves,' Orff, who works as a field biologist at the National Wildlife Federation and serves as vice president of the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation, said. 'The adult ticks are feeding one more time before they fall off and they basically drain the moose’s supply of blood.'

Around April, the female ticks fall off their hosts to lay their eggs. If they land on snow as opposed to dry land, the eggs are less fruitful. However, as climate change represses winter weather, tick populations have boomed."

nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-05-31/zo

NHPR · ‘Zombie moose’: As climate change shortens winters, ticks ravage New Hampshire’s moose populationBy William Skipworth, New Hampshire Bulletin
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