Moose are on the free within the southern Rockies.
In July 2025, a younger wandering bull was captured roaming a metropolis park in Greeley, Colorado. A spate of comparable city sightings alongside some aggressive moose encounters has elevated moose administration and conservation right into a matter of public debate, particularly throughout metro Denver and the Colorado Entrance Vary.
In Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park, a latest research discovered that moose and elk is likely to be accountable for far-reaching modifications to valley ecosystems, as their shopping reduces necessary crops like willows, depriving beavers of habitat and supplies for his or her wetland engineering. Park wildlife are usually not managed by looking, however the park has tried strategies like fencing moose away from wetland zones. Publicly, dialogue has swirled round additional mitigation measures to sluggish or eradicate moose populations.
On the coronary heart of this debate is a primary query – do moose belong within the southern Rockies in any respect?
Throughout a lot of the final century, moose have been apparently uncommon in Colorado. The animals are absent from some early twentieth century official wildlife tallies. Then, in 1978, the Colorado Division of Wildlife – now Colorado Parks and Wildlife – launched a gaggle of moose into North Park in north-central Colorado. On the time, biologists understood their efforts to be a reintroduction, however within the years since, wildlife managers have shifted their eager about the place of moose in native ecosystems.
Within the a long time that adopted, the moose expanded their vary and numbers. At present, casual estimates by Colorado Parks and Wildlife put the moose inhabitants at round 3,500 animals. Beneath elevated moose shopping stress and a shifting local weather, some mountain wetland environments are altering.
A younger bull moose munches on aspen leaves as he passes properties alongside Newlin Gulch Path in Parker, Colo., in 2013.
Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Submit through Getty Photographs
Ought to these modifications be considered human-made ecological wounds brought on by releasing moose? The Nationwide Park Service appears to assume so.
Statements from 2025 on the park service web site, and different public messaging from wildlife officers, assert that Colorado has by no means supported a breeding inhabitants of moose – solely the occasional transient customer. The factual foundation for this concept appears to hinge closely on an unpublished inside report from 2015, which recognized just a few archaeological or historic information of moose close to the park.
We’re a workforce of archaeologists, paleoecologists and conservation paleobiologists finding out the traditional animals of the Rockies.
Understanding moose and their interactions with folks centuries in the past means fastidiously analyzing totally different traces that survive the passage of time. These can vary from the bones of animals themselves to oblique clues preserved in all the things from lake sediments to historic information.
Are moose really native to Colorado?
As scientists finding out the previous, we all know that reconstructing the traditional geographic ranges of animals is troublesome. Archaeological websites with animal bones is usually a useful gizmo to know the previous, particularly for tracing the meals decisions of historical people. However such websites might be uncommon, and even when they’re nicely preserved and nicely studied, it may take plenty of care and scientific analysis to determine the species of every bone.
Tougher nonetheless is figuring out the intimate particulars of historical animals’ lives, together with how and the place they lived, died or reproduced. Such key particulars might be particularly opaque for moose, who’re solitary and elusive. Due to this, moose could not find yourself in human diets, even the place each species have established populations. A complete overview of archaeological websites from throughout Alaska and a few areas of the Canadian Yukon, the place moose are widespread at this time and have probably been current because the finish of the final Ice Age, discovered that moose have been practically absent till the previous few centuries. In actual fact, moose usually comprised lower than 0.1% of the full variety of bones in very massive collections, in the event that they appeared in any respect. In some areas, cultural causes like taboos in opposition to moose looking may forestall them from ending up in archaeological bone tallies.
Moose sightings seem within the very earliest written information of the realm that will turn into Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park. In his 1863 diary, Milton Estes described occurring upon a big moose alongside a band of elk whereas on a looking journey.
“Since elk were common I picked out Mr. Moose for my game,” he wrote.
Milton thought he had bagged “the first and only moose that had ever been killed so far south.” He was incorrect.
Our survey of Colorado websites turned up historical moose at Jurgens, close to Greeley, dated to greater than 9,000 years in the past, and even moose bone instruments among the many ruins of Mesa Verde, just a few centuries in the past.
This query of whether or not moose are native to the southern Rockies is not only a philosophical one – its reply will form administration selections by the Nationwide Park Service and others.
Official narrative minimizes moose presence
The up to date concept of moose as non-native animals displays a special understanding than was widespread just a few a long time in the past. Within the Forties, some biologists described moose as a local species that had been “extirpated except for stragglers.” As just lately because the early Seventies, Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park officers understood their moose work as a reintroduction of “wild animals once native to the park.” Our findings recommend that the legitimate data of earlier scientists has since pale or been changed, repositioning moose as ecological outsiders.
Geographic distribution of moose observations in Colorado from historic sources dated between 1860 and 1970 and printed archaeological identification.
Isaac Hart/Taylor et al. in overview
As moose-human conflicts and shifting wetland ecologies immediate onerous conversations over tips on how to handle moose, a variety of choices have been mentioned in public discourse. These embrace programs of motion such because the reintroduction of carnivores like wolves, or focused looking entry for tribes or the general public.
If moose are ‘invasive,’ they are often eliminated
For federal companies, labels like “invasive” or “non-native” carry authorized connotations and can be utilized to allow different measures, like eradication.
In Olympic Nationwide Park, the place mountain goats have been deemed invasive and ecologically impactful, biologists undertook an extermination marketing campaign that concerned capturing the animals from helicopters, regardless of warnings from archaeologists as way back because the late Nineties that the information behind their argument was flawed.
Because the animal and plant communities of our Rockies change quickly in a warming world, this sort of coverage wouldn’t solely be unsupported by scientific proof, but additionally more likely to impede the flexibility of our animal communities to outlive, adapt and thrive.
The historic proof signifies that moose will not be international intruders. Archival, archaeological and anthropological information exhibits that moose have been within the southern Rockies for hundreds of years, if not millennia. Moderately than deal with moose as a menace, we urge Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park and different companies to work in partnership with tribes, paleoecologists and the general public to fastidiously develop traditionally grounded administration plans for this Colorado native.
