American moose (Alces a. americanus) North of Historical Range

Hugh DeMann wrote:

The moose was on the north slope of Kongakut River. I estimate that this was about 60 miles from the mouth of the river. There was one individual in willow habitat on a tributary to the Kongakut. The moose ran away as we approached, alerting us to its presence. This was north of the "tree line" though there were still willows in the stream beds at this latitude.

Tom Okey wrote:

A recent paper by Tape et al. (2016) in the open access journal PLOS ONE documents the 20th Century range expansion of American moose (Alces alces americanus). The described expansion of moose range by hundreds of kilometers north and west since 1860 is illustrated in Figure 1, which is from that paper. They explain this expansion as primarily resulting in the increase in shrub habitat that moose forage in, which has resulted from the effects of climate change on vegetation. A paper by Kelsall (1972) also documented northward range expansion, and attributed the shift to a response in vegetation patterns, but at that point (46 years ago) he did not make the connection to climate change.

The present observation appears to be the most northward observation of American moose in the iNaturalist database. The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is also shifting north, and this may also aid in the spread of American moose due to the commensal facilitation of moose by beaver through the engineering of aquatic habitats with nutrient-rich aquatic forage plants.

Mike Brook contributed a LEO My Map on moose sightings:

The My Map linked here shows some moose posts on LEO overlaid with some moose sightings reported in iNaturalist.

Literature cited

Kelsall, J.P., 1972. The northern limits of moose (Alces alces) in western Canada. Journal of Mammalogy, 53(1), pp.129-138.

Tape, K.D., Gustine, D.D., Ruess, R.W., Adams, L.G. and Clark, J.A., 2016. Range expansion of moose in Arctic Alaska linked to warming and increased shrub habitat. PloS one, 11(4), p.e0152636.

.