Prince George,  B.C. – From January to the end of April, there was a call issued for  folks to report  on the condition of moose  throughout the province. Specifically, it was to gather information on  the impacts ticks  have been having on the moose population.Mike Bridger, who is with the Natural Resource and Environmental Studies at UNBC,  headed up the  province wide  survey.   People were  asked to go on line and describe  the degree to which the animal had  lost  hair.  The  greater the hair loss, the more severe the  tick infestation.

While the  final report is still weeks away, he says preliminary data indicates the  incidence of  severe  tick  infestation on moose was highest in the  Omineca region, which includes Prince George  “In the Prince George region , that was the area where  there were the most  sightings of moose with  severe hair loss.”

He says between  January and April 31st,  64% of the moose  observed  had some degree of hair loss,  and  that percentage climbed  during the last two months of the survey with 78% of all the  moose sighted  were observed to have some degree of hair loss.

What is not known is if this  level of  infestation is normal.  This is the first time a study  of this kind has been done so Bridger is hoping the study can be  carried on, “To get a really good grasp on what’s going on, we need to  continue this study over the course of several years, just  to have some comparisons.”

He says a lot of the information came from people in urban areas, so the study may not paint an accurate picture of what is happening  in the  full region.  In correlating the information, he tried to  weed out  double sightings of the same animal by checking location and time of  sighting.  “That’s one of the problems with the study” says Bridger.

“Overall,  it seemed to be  a positive program with  a lot of  good feedback ” says Bridger.  He is hoping further  studies, combined  with  keeping track of  weather conditions, should lead to  accurate  forecasts for  tick infestations.  A mild winter  will likely lead to more  ticks in the following winter as  the tick population can’t lay its eggs when there is lots of snow. “Given the conditions we had this past winter, I  think next  winter we will see a severe tick infestation.”