a battle of giants and bloodsuckers » Yale Climate Connections

Transcript:

Moose are the giants of northern forests. But in some areas, they’re threatened by tiny creatures called winter ticks.

In fall, the tick larvae hide in the brush and wait for animals like moose to climb onto.

Steeve Côté, a biologist at Laval University in Québec, says that by winter, some moose end up covered by thousands of ticks sucking their blood.

Côté: “And it’s itchy, so they will scratch a lot on trees and they will lose hair. … They’re not eating … and they become weaker and weaker.”

For moose calves, tick infestations can be deadly.

So to investigate how much the ticks affect moose calf survival, Côté’s team treated some calves with anti-tick pesticides, while leaving others alone.

Just 7% of the treated moose died compared with 40% of those that were untreated.

As the climate warms, winter ticks are growing more common in some areas, so the threat to moose is growing.

Treating every animal with pesticide would be impossible, as it requires capturing each moose with a net shot from a helicopter.

Forest managers can also try to limit tick habitat, but so far, there’s no simple solution that can protect moose from these tiny bloodsuckers.

Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media