“You can’t love softwoods and hate hardwoods… and other thoughts on silvicultural racism by a flaming mooseologist”. Fortunately for moose, from the beginning of his presentation Dr. Roy Rae had his audience intrigued. Unfortunately for moose, his presentation was about the astonishing loss of their habitat resulting in a 70% loss of their population. There are factors that impact moose, some of which we have no control over, such as winter severity, predators, and parasite and disease, and some of which we do, such as their habitat quality and quantity. Food and cover have a large impact on moose, we influence this through silviculture. Clearcutting is the most predominant method of harvesting trees, you just go through the land and cut down everything in your path. Unfortunately, this leaves the landscape bare, with no structural trees for protection from snow and predators, or food. The land is then replanted with a monoculture of pine and/or spruce of the same age, resulting in a homogeneous forest. Moose like heterogeneity. They like a mixed age stand, hard and soft woods, and burned and unburned areas. Winter pellets revealed their diet to consist of 22% birch, 6% aspen, 4% dogwood, and 45% subalpine fir. Subalpine fir is not a management objective. It is cut down, but it is not replanted. The hardwoods are also cut down, even sprayed with glyphosate to kill them, and definitely not replanted. Collared moose showed that they did not go in clearcuts and if they did they didn’t go farther in than 150m from the forest edge. Dr. Rae did point out that the Chief Forester has recognised the need for retention and has suggested that harvesting retain mature trees of mixed wood. This would provide the moose with at lease some shelter and food they need. However, this suggestion has yet to show any action, clearcuts today are still appearing to have almost no retention.

Dr. Rae’s humour was effective in achieving his goal of the presentation. He brought in some subalpine fir which kept his audience engaged, if they weren’t already.

Different types of harvesting practices are a component of my own research. I will be looking into how different types of logging effect coarse woody debris and it’s concomitant impact on pine marten. Though they are different species and use different components of the forest ecosystem, both marten and moose are affected by logging practices, thus increasing the importance of proper forest management.

Dr. Rae responded well to questions although he couldn’t answer all of them. As a researcher it is important to acknowledge that you can’t know everything and that you shouldn’t try to because you might otherwise give false information. If I was able to ask a question I would ask if wildlife tree patches are sufficient for moose and what their minimum size can be?