THE MYSTERY MOOSE OF NEW ZEALAND

 

New Zealand is no stranger to invasive species imperiling its fragile ecosystem. Island nations are especially vulnerable to the devastating impact introduced animals have on native wildlife. One need not look further than what 12 million feral cats have done in Australia; nothing short of the extinction of at least 36 species of small native animals. There is historical precedence as well. Most famously the dodo decimated in part by the introduction of rats on the Mauritius island.

Larger introduced animals also pose a problem. Wild horses, Asiatic buffalo, feral donkey and goats and even camels have had a significant impact on the Australian landscape. In our own country wild hogs and abandoned pythons have menaced the South for years.

New Zealand too hosts many exotic species of deer, including our own native elk. This is not ideal but there is one introduced species that, if it still resides in the Fiordland of New Zealand, I for one hope there is one more confirmed sighting of.

This is the moose, the largest member of the deer family and a familiar sight throughout North America. One of my most memorable trips to New Hampshire was in August of 1992 on a drive up to the White Mountains in which, after driving past many signs warning of moose crossing, my father pointed out a cow moose with her calf grazing on the side of the road.

A small population of moose did live in New Zealand in the early 20th century.

In 1900, as part of a bargaining agreement with the government of New Zealand, the Hudson Shipping Company of Canada shipped ten moose calves from the Beaver Hills of Saskatchewan to New Zealand to start a breeding population for the enjoyment of hunters. Many of the calves died along the way on the 8,000-mile journey. The four survivors were released into the woods surrounding the town of Hokitika. The animals never bred, however, and the last remnant, a cow, was shot in 1908. In April of 1910 another attempt was made to bring moose to New Zealand. Ten more animals, four bulls and six cows, were shipped from Canada and released into Super Cove at Dusky Sound.

This population fared better and remained undisturbed until 1923. At that time, Eddie Herrick, a local commissioned by the government to conduct a survey on the population reported that the animals were breeding well and concluded that a controlled hunting season was sustainable. Herrick would later change his position when discovering that moose populations were lower than expected, but by that time two bulls had been shot by hunters and Herrick himself would shoot a bull in 1929, the last moose legally killed in New Zealand.

For the next two decades, however, the remnant population made its presence known around Dusky Sound. The last confirmed photograph of a moose in New Zealand, a lone cow wading into a river, came in 1952 and then the animals were never seen again.

For all of its similarities to the Pacific Northwest Fiordland was not an ideal habitat for moose. It is a land of heavy rainfall and thick dense old growth forest, providing less than enough food to sustain a breeding population of moose. Competition with the red deer (also an introduced species) seems to have sealed their fate.

And yet, much like the Thylacine, an animal exterminated from its native range and therefore a greater tragedy and ecological calamity, the New Zealand moose has a small but determined band of fans who refuse to believe it is truly gone. They are not, it must be said, empty handed. A shed antler was found in 1976 and hair samples found from 2000 to 2002 proved to be from moose after DNA.

Still, no confirmed sightings of the animals have come forward in over seventy years. All thing considered, given the less than suitable habitat its surprising this introduced population lasted as long as it did. Nonetheless, the legend refuses to die and the hope of seeing a moose continues to drive tourists to Fiordland.