Moose aren't a native Newfoundland species — but they were brought here to save one

Forest denizen, highway hazard, hunters' trophy, a freezer full of meat — the moose plays many roles in Newfoundland.

With an estimated 125,000 animals, about one for every four human residents, the island is home to the most concentrated population of moose in North America.

Though today they seem to be everywhere, moose haven't always been here. Legend has it they were introduced in 1904 to serve as a food animal in a place with few other local sources of meat.

The truth is a bit more complicated. Moose were brought to Newfoundland to protect one of the island's native mammals: the caribou.

At the turn of the 20th century, there were serious concerns that caribou populations were in decline.

The Newfoundland Railway had opened up the island's interior, and the tracks crossed seasonal caribou migration routes. Hunters, many of them lured from abroad by the near-guarantee of bagging a buck, set up camps along the railroad and shot into the herds as they passed, killing hundreds of animals.

If caribou numbers dwindled, it would deprive Newfoundlanders of one of their main sources of winter fare.

According to journalist P. T. McGrath, caribou shared "with the all-prevailing codfish the duty of keeping alive the coast folk who are shut off from the outer world by the unpenetrable [sic] ice barrier which then covers the North Atlantic."

It wasn't just the inhabitants of the outports who relied on venison over the winter. 

Some of the caribou hunted in the island's interior were sold and shipped to St. John's, providing rural hunters with off-season income and residents of the capital with cheap local meat. Caribou could be purchased in the city for as little as two or three cents a pound — around one sixth the cost of beef, which was heavily tariffed.

To protect this natural resource, the Newfoundland government passed the Act for the Preservation of Deer in the spring of 1902.

The act increased the cost of hunting licenses for foreign sportsmen and lowered the number of caribou they could harvest. It shortened the hunting season and banned killing caribou with dogs or while the animals were fording water.

To support these new hunting restrictions, the government agreed on one last measure.

They would import a breeding stock of moose from the Canadian mainland. 

The idea seems to have been that introducing a second species of deer would lighten the hunting pressure on caribou. Moose were chosen because their habits and habitat are distinctly different from those of caribou, making it unlikely the two would compete for food.

Plus, adding another large game animal would increase the island's appeal as a "sportsman's paradise," a reputation that attracted valuable tourist dollars to Newfoundland's small economy.

An earlier attempt to introduce moose had been made in 1875 at the request of a group of St. John's sportsmen, but the two animals imported at that time had apparently failed to breed. In 1903, to increase the odds of success, the government asked the province of New Brunswick for seven moose.

The animals, each weighing in between 270 and 550 kilograms, would have to be brought out of the New Brunswick wilderness alive. In a time before tranquillizers, the task would require a good deal of ingenuity and a keen understanding of moose behaviour.

Newfoundland tapped John Connell from Bartibog, N.B. for the job. Already a respected outdoorsman, Connell would become famous in the Miramichi Valley not just for hunting moose, but for taming them.

For a reward of $50 per moose, the equivalent of a few thousand dollars today, Connell and a group of neighbours snowshoed into the woods in March 1904. Moose, he reasoned, would be easiest to trap in winter, when they had lost weight from scarce grazing and would flounder in the deep snow.

When the men came upon a moose, they would run it down until it was exhausted, then fence it in so it could be lassoed and brought out by horse-drawn sled.

Connell had a close call during the hunt when a big bull moose rushed him, knocking him over. The moose reared up and was lassoed by one of his companions just before its hoof came down on his head. Connell made it out alive but was  hospitalized for 10 days with his injuries.

Once the seven moose ordered by the Newfoundland government had been successfully captured, they were loaded onto a train to North Sydney, but not all of them survived the trip.

A cow and a bull died on the way from fright or — by another account — indigestion, and a second cow died giving birth to a calf as the animals waited at North Sydney to cross the Cabot Strait.

The remaining four moose, two bulls and two cows, were ferried to Newfoundland, where another train took them inland.

The Western Star reported that "at all the stopping points crowds gathered around the car and viewed with wonder the strange animals."

The moose were released on a government deer preserve near Howley where they would be protected from hunters for several years until the species had a chance to establish itself.

This time, on an island with few natural predators and no deadly parasites, the moose flourished.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to safeguard the caribou. Of the estimated 150,000 to 200,000 that roamed the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as few as 2,000 remained by the 1930s.

Today, Newfoundland's caribou number roughly 30,000, and some hunters are worried it's moose that are on the decline.

But don't expect an influx of bison to bolster them. Provincial regulations now prohibit the release of imported wildlife into the Newfoundland ecosystem, leaving this conservation method firmly in the past.

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