BOISE, IDAHO — When moose sauntered out of the last Ice Age, they left behind an array of extinct species. Wooly mammoths, sabertooth cats, dire wolves, huge short-faced bears, and the very similar stag-moose.
Modern-day moose are still on the move. Experts say they're now thriving in a new landscape where habitat changes -- spurred by human influences -- have allowed them to break out of isolated strongholds.
"Forty years ago a moose was like an exotic -- it was like a giraffe. Nobody had any moose," said Ed Mitchell, information supervisor with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "They've really spread since then."
Lewis and Clark never saw a moose when they crossed Idaho 200 years ago, and trappers' journals note moose as rare occurrences, said Dale E. Toweill of Idaho Fish and Game.
In 1939, Idaho had 1,000 moose. Today, the state has an estimated population of 15,000 to 25,000 Shiras moose, more than any other state.
The Shiras moose is the smallest subspecies, inhabiting parts of the Rocky Mountain West. A bull averages less than 800 pounds -- about half the size of an Alaska Yukon moose.
Experts say smaller moose can better cope with warmer temperatures and live farther south. The result is booming populations across the region. Wyoming now has as many as 10,000 moose, Utah has about 4,500, Montana is home to 5,000, and Washington has about 1,000, mostly in the northeast corner of the state.
"Moose may have been at low densities [200 years ago]," said Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and a professor at the University of Montana. "Certainly not at the densities we see today."
Logging and development are credited with opening up areas and allowing the growth of shrubs, the main ingredient in a moose's diet. At the same time, predators were largely killed off from wide areas of moose territory.
"Habitat disturbance caused by industry has favored some wildlife species, moose being one," said Berger, who conducted a 10-year study of moose in Grand Teton National Park. "And with the historic loss of grizzly bears and wolves, until the 1990s, there were huge areas of Idaho that had good vegetation and no large carnivores.
"Moose are all of a sudden like a kid in a candy store," he said.
