Climate change and cervids

[MeghanOOD]

https://oodmag.com/climate-change-and-cervids/

How Ontario's cervids — white-tailed deer, moose, elk, and caribou — respond to a rapidly changing climate is of great interest to hunters.

[Gilroy]

https://oodmag.com/climate-change-and-cervids/

How Ontario's cervids — white-tailed deer, moose, elk, and caribou — respond to a rapidly changing climate is of great interest to hunters.

Well within a few sentences this author had lost me.

" A big dump of snow, for example, can kill thousands of whitetails. "

Been hunting here for about 45 years and have never heard about anything that bad in any part of Canada. I have no fear whitetails will be in any peril in the future, they have been around since dinosaurs and can occupy just about every range across America and Canada.

Article way to alarmist. IMHO

[MeghanOOD]

Well within a few sentences this author had lost me.

" A big dump of snow, for example, can kill thousands of whitetails. "

Been hunting here for about 45 years and have never heard about anything that bad in any part of Canada. I have no fear whitetails will be in any peril in the future, they have been around since dinosaurs and can occupy just about every range across America and Canada.

Article way too* alarmist. IMHO

Yes...

"Wildlife biologists and cervid scientists turn to geological time periods when looking at how species evolved and adapted to changing environmental conditions, changes that let some species flourish while others sank into oblivion.

Geological times are time periods measured in millions of years."

They adapt to their environment but it takes time. It also takes time to mark a shift in trends: ... "30-year time periods are the minimum lengths needed to look for trends possibly indicative of climate change."

[sabmgb]

I don't know about one big dump, but lots of snow dose kill lots of deer. They can't get to there food and the wolves have a good winter. years ago in WMU 49 we had a really hard winter, the next fall I was hunting along a ridge and came across 13 deer skeletons, they looked like they had just curled up and died. That just me and one ridge, how many other deer died that winter.

[Species8472]

Well within a few sentences this author had lost me.

" A big dump of snow, for example, can kill thousands of whitetails. "

One big dump of snow will only really be a factor if it persists on the ground. In Ontario i believe the 50 50 rule is used to predict if it will be a bad winter for the deer. 50 50 rule is a snow depth of 50 cm on the flat in the bush for more than 50 days.

[Fenelon]

Not a good article. It totally missed the boat on the effects of increased temperatures, both winter and summer, on moose populations. They have evolved as a cold weather animal and with climate change they are now suffering from heat stress for most of the year. Google it and read all the abstracts on this topic - eg. modifications to behaviour when summer temps go above 17C, impacts of heat stress for foraging and physical body condition, . increased predation due to behaviour modification, increased winter tick survival due to lack of cold winters. It's a double whammy - hot summers and hot winters are already doing them in.

[MeghanOOD]

Not a good article. It totally missed the boat on the effects of increased temperatures, both winter and summer, on moose populations. They have evolved as a cold weather animal and with climate change they are now suffering from heat stress for most of the year. Google it and read all the abstracts on this topic - eg. modifications to behaviour when summer temps go above 17C, impacts of heat stress for foraging and physical body condition, . increased predation due to behaviour modification, increased winter tick survival due to lack of cold winters. It's a double whammy - hot summers and hot winters are already doing them in.

Here's something you may find interesting: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/20...orm-ticks-deer
We reached out to Seth Moore last year to do a Q&A about the correlation between the migration of deer influencing moose brain worm and calves' predation by wolves, but never heard back. The data and trends are still in the making, was the consensus.

[Sam Menard]

Not a good article. It totally missed the boat on the effects of increased temperatures, both winter and summer, on moose populations. They have evolved as a cold weather animal and with climate change they are now suffering from heat stress for most of the year. Google it and read all the abstracts on this topic - eg. modifications to behaviour when summer temps go above 17C, impacts of heat stress for foraging and physical body condition, . increased predation due to behaviour modification, increased winter tick survival due to lack of cold winters. It's a double whammy - hot summers and hot winters are already doing them in.

As you pointed out Moose (and caribou) are already feeling the impacts. The prevalence of winter ticks is another concern as well.

What I’ve noticed over the past 20 years are the extremes (temperature, precipitation) especially the sudden swings from one extreme to the other. The weather has been very erratic. This erratic pattern can play havoc with deer populations as it can be difficult to bounce back after getting wiped out.