‘No chain stores, but moose on every corner’: as Colorado herds thrive, clashes with people rise

A moose in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Moose are now seen sauntering across golf courses and car parks in Denver’s suburbs. Photograph: Design Pics/Alamy

They tagged and collared the moose, then slid a specially designed sling under her belly, attached by a rope to one of the helicopters. For a moment, as the pilot eased into the air, the moose lurched, drawing her legs upward as her feet left the ground. Now, that experiment is reaching a head, and thousands of wild moose roam the state’s woodlands and mountains – coming into increasing and often deadly conflict with humans.

In State Forest park, where officials originally released moose in 1978, as many as 700 now roam the area. “It’s the last frontier,” says Tony Johnson, a State Forest ranger. “There are no chain stores, but moose on every corner.”uman values have always shaped wildlife policy.

At the Rocky Mountain park headquarters, a landscape ecologist, Will Deacy, shows an infrared image of a mountainside covered in dark trees. A closer look revealed white silhouettes scattered among the pines: moose going about their mysterious business. “They are a new species in a new context,” Deacy said. “There is so much we just don’t know.”

According to biologists, an adult moose can eat up to 27kg of willow a day, far more than an adult elk, which consumes roughly a third of that amount of forage, only a fraction of which is willow. And because national parks ban hunting, moose tend to congregate within their borders, achieving densities almost five times higher than outside them.As moose numbers have grown, so have encounters with humans. In 2012 cars hit moose four times in Colorado; a decade later there were 59 collisions.

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