CENTRAL MAINE • May 2, 2024
From 1999 until 2019, Registered Maine Guide Greg Drummond and I led dozens of moose-watching trips. Between 2015 and 2019, our moose-calling success rate — very high in the early 2000s — plummeted in Maine’s Western mountains. Many weekends produced zero moose. Here’s what I told our disappointed clients: Winter tick populations — the scourge of moose — are soaring. Maine’s winters are shorter and milder. Our longer, warmer falls provide additional weeks for ticks to attach themselves to moose and in greater numbers. Ticks are merely symptoms of a much greater threat: climate change. By the end of this century, if our climate warms further, Maine will likely become inhospitable for its most iconic mammal. ~ Ron Joseph