Changing Numbers or Condition of Moose

Molly Chythlook of Dillingham observed, "Moose and caribou are getting killed by wolves. The increased wolf population is affecting the moose and caribou. And the wolves are going into the villages and attacking the dogs that are tied up. People have killed them right outside their door. Now if the guys want to harvest moose they have to go a long ways out of town."

Jack Fagerstrom of Golovin noted, "A few years ago the ADF&G radio collared 23 cow moose. By spring three calves has survived predation, and one cow had been killed by a bear. When asked why we had such a large population of young bears, our area biologist, Steve Machida, said sport hunters had killed all the large males. We've even seen sows with triplets, which is highly unusual. Moose numbers are down - 3 years ago we'd usually see thirty to forty moose in our rides out into the country. Last year, we'd see three or four."

John Andrews Jr. from McGrath noted, "Well, the moose are really bad around McGrath. There are six or seven packs of wolves around McGrath and Nikolai. They practically took all the moose out of McGrath."

Jack Lorrigan from Sitka said, "Another story is some people were having some problems with their moose populations up in the interior. And so they met with the scientists to try to figure out what it was and then fish and game was going to go count moose. And the Natives said, No, you should go count the beaver ponds. The scientists had already decided, No, we are going to count moose. What had happened was that the beaver ponds had flooded the entire moose habitat and the moose were crashing cause they were starving. The Natives knew it but they were going to go count moose and find out what was wrong by counting moose. And they never came to any resolution at the meeting. So we come to this table and I’m trying to grasp what is going to happen in the future with this information you get. I’d like to see some real change when it gets absorbed by the government and goes up and gets digested and then comes back to us. It is my big fear that it is just lip service. I’m not saying that you are doing lip service but that is what has happened over and over again."

John Nicholas of Kasigluk said, "Even the moose are showing up near the coast. For the coastal villages, the moose are really rare."