The number of moose in Minnesota plummeted by one third in the last year, a startling decline that prompted state wildlife officials to suspend indefinitely the annual hunt of the emblematic animal.
The sudden acceleration -- double the rate of recent years -- adds new urgency to an unprecedented research effort to understand, before it's too late, why moose are dying in such numbers.
"It reaffirms the conservation community's need to better understand why this species of the north is disappearing from our state," said Tom Landwehr, commissioner of the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Results of the annual aerial survey, conducted in January and released Wednesday, indicated that 2,760 moose are left in Minnesota, down from 4,230 in 2012. In 2006, the population in the northeastern corner of the state peaked at 8,840, but by then moose had already largely disappeared from the northwest corner of Minnesota, where they had long been part of the landscape.
State wildlife officials say that, at the current rate of decline, moose could be gone from Minnesota in a matter of years.
"That's pretty grim," said Rolf Peterson, a wildlife researcher from Michigan Technical University who has studied moose on Isle Royale for decades and who advised the DNR.
Landwehr stressed Wednesday that, while the moose's decline remains a puzzle, the state's limited hunts are not to blame. Biologists say that even with the annual shooting harvest of about 50 bulls a year, the state still has plenty of males to ensure a healthy population. But, Landwehr said, suspending the hunt is "the only tool we have to control the mortality of moose."
Other moose researchers say that they often hear from members of the public who ask why a hunt is allowed. "If 50 moose die, then that's 50 less that are out there," said Ron Moen, moose researcher at the University of Minnesota Duluth.