Deer deadly to moose, caribou
Orphaned fawns feeding at the Hope for Wildlife rehabilitation center, Seaforth.
To some, they are grey grazers at the edge of a summer field. Others remember their white flags flashed in woodland flight. Still more see them in the sweet, spot-coated innocence of May. No animal in Nova Scotia is known better, nor loved for more reasons, than the white-tailed deer.
What is not well known is that Bambi and his family are not native to this province and played a deadly role in destroying its cousins who were here in abundance when the first Europeans arrived. In fact, the extinction of caribou and the decimation of mainland moose both can be tied directly to the arrival of the white-tail.
In the first years of European settlement, deer were absent from Nova Scotia. They need a mixture of new forest growth and clearings not then found here. However, as the climax forest was cleared by lumbermen and farmers, the deer population exploded, first through New England and then into the Maritime Provinces. By the 1890s, deer were common in southern New Brunswick and had moved into our province's Cumberland and Colchester counties.
About the same time, impatient sportsmen set animals free near Digby and Halifax. Expanding on three fronts through increasingly inviting habitat, deer numbers soared. Hunting was legalized throughout the province in 1928.
Habitat change from logging, fires, and settlement, as well as sports killing, had already undermined the populations of caribou and moose. The deer's arrival was the death blow. Caribou were the first to go. They were in serious decline by 1900 and by the 1920s, there were none left. The fate of the mainland moose was similar but less complete. Still, by 1936 there weren't enough animals for a hunting season in western Nova Scotia and the last moose zone in the east was closed in 1981. The species is now listed as endangered.
What is there about deer that makes its company so deadly for caribou and moose? I remember a winter afternoon in 1965, sitting in the Acadia University office of wildlife biologist Dr. Don Dodds, when he gave me the answer. Deer brought north with them a small parasite in their digestive tract that causes them no harm. However, in caribou or moose, it migrates to the brain and destroys the central nervous system.
Symptoms included paralysis, hind-quarter weakness, loss of fear, shaking, and walking in circles until death. This became widely known as "moose sickness" or "moose staggers", and the subject of a revealing poem by Hants county's Alden Nowlan (http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Alden_Nowlan/7695).
Perhaps because caribou were smaller than moose, it hit them harder and more quickly. I remember Dr. Dodds telling me he thought if weather was cold enough, it would stop the parasite's spread. It overwinters outside of the deer in slugs and snails. Perhaps he was right. In cold northern New Brunswick and the highlands of Cape Breton, moose are still plentiful. It's hard to imagine an animal as beautiful as a white-tail being harmful. However, the extinct caribou and endangered moose of this province say otherwise.
What is not well known is that Bambi and his family are not native to this province and played a deadly role in destroying its cousins who were here in abundance when the first Europeans arrived. In fact, the extinction of caribou and the decimation of mainland moose both can be tied directly to the arrival of the white-tail.
In the first years of European settlement, deer were absent from Nova Scotia. They need a mixture of new forest growth and clearings not then found here. However, as the climax forest was cleared by lumbermen and farmers, the deer population exploded, first through New England and then into the Maritime Provinces. By the 1890s, deer were common in southern New Brunswick and had moved into our province's Cumberland and Colchester counties.
About the same time, impatient sportsmen set animals free near Digby and Halifax. Expanding on three fronts through increasingly inviting habitat, deer numbers soared. Hunting was legalized throughout the province in 1928.
Habitat change from logging, fires, and settlement, as well as sports killing, had already undermined the populations of caribou and moose. The deer's arrival was the death blow. Caribou were the first to go. They were in serious decline by 1900 and by the 1920s, there were none left. The fate of the mainland moose was similar but less complete. Still, by 1936 there weren't enough animals for a hunting season in western Nova Scotia and the last moose zone in the east was closed in 1981. The species is now listed as endangered.
What is there about deer that makes its company so deadly for caribou and moose? I remember a winter afternoon in 1965, sitting in the Acadia University office of wildlife biologist Dr. Don Dodds, when he gave me the answer. Deer brought north with them a small parasite in their digestive tract that causes them no harm. However, in caribou or moose, it migrates to the brain and destroys the central nervous system.
Symptoms included paralysis, hind-quarter weakness, loss of fear, shaking, and walking in circles until death. This became widely known as "moose sickness" or "moose staggers", and the subject of a revealing poem by Hants county's Alden Nowlan (http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Alden_Nowlan/7695).
Perhaps because caribou were smaller than moose, it hit them harder and more quickly. I remember Dr. Dodds telling me he thought if weather was cold enough, it would stop the parasite's spread. It overwinters outside of the deer in slugs and snails. Perhaps he was right. In cold northern New Brunswick and the highlands of Cape Breton, moose are still plentiful. It's hard to imagine an animal as beautiful as a white-tail being harmful. However, the extinct caribou and endangered moose of this province say otherwise.
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