Thursday, September 20, 2018

Moose Migrates to New Mexico?

Very unusual sighting. Efforts to introduce them in Colorado have apparently been too successful:
Walking along State Road 522, the visiting moose was the subject of several photos and phone calls to wildlife offices in the area as the sighting marked a rare occasion in New Mexico wildlife history. A moose was sighted in Chama in 2017 and for the first time, Costilla welcomes a moose to its environs.

"This is the third moose that I have heard of in Northern New Mexico in 23 years,” said Clint Henson, captain of northeast field operations for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. "It's definitely not unheard of. Young bulls like that tend to move and try and find new territory," Henson said. "I think moose are much more adaptable than we think."

Moose originally come from the northern parts of the Americas and are scarcely seen in the wild in the southern parts of the United States. Colorado introduced the Shiras subspecies of moose in the 1970s to some of the state's northern reaches in an effort to expand the roaming area of the animals. Shiras moose are slightly smaller than moose found in Alaska and have slightly smaller antlers than their northern cousins.

Efforts were made to introduce 12 moose into Colorado in the late 1970s and continued when the population began to thrive in their new environment. Dozens of moose were brought from Wyoming and Utah over the years, and the Colorado population rose as the decades went on.

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