State biologists proposed the dramatic drop from 70 permits issued last year. Since 2005, the moose population has shrunk from about 4,800 to 1,700. Tick infestation, warmer winters and other factors are believed to be harming the population of the lumbering creatures.
Given their struggling status, even 14 permits is too many and the hunt should stop, some say. It’s baffling why the Fish & Wildlife Department “continues to feel the need to put hunting pressures on a species that is truly imperiled in Vermont,” said Walter Medwid, founding member of the Vermont Wildlife Coalition.
Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Louis Porter disagrees. He supported the proposal for 14 permits, noting that’s the fewest the department has recommended since moose hunting was revived in 1993. It had been banned after the animals were nearly wiped out the late 1880s. They were rarely seen in Vermont until the 1980s. But by the 1990s they had made a solid comeback. Some started seeing them as a nuisance because of car accidents and trampled maple sugar tubing.
At the hunt’s peak, in 2008, the state issued 1,260 permits.
This year, hunting would be allowed only in the Northeast Kingdom, where moose are most numerous.
Hunters generally have about a 50 percent success rate, so it’s likely that seven or so moose would be taken, Porter said. “At that level, this will have virtually no impact on the moose,” he said.
The board unanimously approved the Fish & Wildlife staff recommendation for 14 permits. The proposal will be debated at additional public hearings before a final vote in April. The moose season is in the fall.
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Perhaps we should stop killing bobcats which predate on the mice that are the primary carrier of ticks?
Why on earth are we allowing the pelt hunting of an animal that most Vermonters have never even seen?
Maybe the state should consider the long term health of the herd and suspend the hunt for two to five years to allow the numbers to really grow. I grew up in the NEK and saw moose quite often when I was young. I spent my 20s living at the top of Bolton and saw moose on a regular basis. Now I drive all over the state trying to find a moose to show my kid and cant find a track. Its time to put the long term health of the herd over the short term money that comes in from the hunt. If not no money will come in because no one goes moose hunting in a state with no moose.
Time to let the moose population recover from the impacts of ticks, stress from climate change, etc. Stop killing animals for “sport”. Killing when one genuinely needs food is understandable–but killing for “sport” is not.–especially since the species as a whole is suffering a radical population decline.
I won’t pretend to be a wildlife resource expert like some. I do question how to differentiate between hunting for sport versus hunting for meat. All the hunters I know enjoy both the hunt and ,if successful ,the meat it provides. I don’t know any trophy hunters .
This has nothing to do with trophy hunting vs meat hunting…
By selling even a few tags Vermont fish and wildlife will receive well over $100k in draw and tag fees which goes straight towards the conservation of these awesome creatures. Without hunters there would be virtually no funds to protect and help these guys and they would disappear at an even more alarming rate..