‘The bottom line is that MNR managers are ignoring a general population decline (and) …increasing tags based on unreliable individual population estimates’

The number of moose hunters and harvest are down for the sixth consecutive year — by six per cent and 10 per cent respectively from last year — according to the latest data from the Ministry of Natural Resources.

That’s down 46 per cent and 25 per cent from 2019 when MNR was going to provide more killing opportunities. Those are pretty staggering losses for a resource that supposedly generates $200 million in the economy each year.

I’m surprised that some members of parliament haven’t noticed and raised a concern.

Moose population estimates (and 2026 tag quotas) were released on April Fools Day. 

By my estimate — adding individual wildlife management unit (WMU) estimates interpolated between surveys — the provincial population has probably been stable at about 78,000 moose since 2014. This method doesn’t account for changes, up or down, since the last survey.

That stability may mask a decline because newer techniques may count relatively more moose. Within the units surveyed, the populations declined by 4,800 moose or 17.3 per cent since the last survey. This makes me wonder what is happening in units that have not been surveyed for six or seven years.

It is worth noting that with an uncontrolled harvest, which is exactly the Ontario situation, in spite of tag quotas, harvest numbers are probably a better predictor of population trends than aerial surveys, which have experienced many changes in intensity and technique since first started in the 1960s.

Drop in annual harvest

The drop in annual harvest from an average of 14,000 moose between 1960 and 1973 to 3,000 between 2016 and 2025, suggests that the population might have declined by 80 per cent over this time. Please remember the 80-per-cent figure when I discuss the 2026 tag quotas.

Things are more complicated than that because many moose are not accessible to hunters. Harvests probably represent the decline in “huntable moose” rather than the total population in any year.

It is not possible to manage individual vulnerable animals, so managers must use a variety of things to inform wise decisions to manage that segment of the population within each WMU. This means looking at the decline in harvest more than aerial surveys. Tags must be set using adaptive management that ensures the actual harvest is the same or less than a planned harvest that is also proven by adaptive management to support sustained harvests or promote growth.

Obviously, neither of these things have been done for more than 40 years. Recent research from British Columbia recommends a harvest of just over three per cent for sustainability. Fourteen thousand tags are being offered to kill a “sustainable harvest” that should be 2,300 moose, with fewer animals to allow for growth.

While the aerial surveys have been completed, age-sex information won’t be posted in the data catalogue until later in April. It would be nice to have them to support later comments, but they aren’t necessary. I don’t set harvest or tag quotas, so I don’t need exact numbers. I can explain my recommendations in terms of the information presented and management principles.

It’s been a good winter with lots of snow for surveys. Seventeen were done. There are some interesting results.

The estimates in WMU 61 increased 105 per cent and WMU 35 dropped by 67 per cent in four years, while Unit 40 lost 56 per cent in three years. There were smaller, but still large, changes in other units.

These changes are unrealistic, but they were used to change tag quotas as if they were. One of the problems with surveys done in landscape zones is that they only represent four different and relatively small areas of the province this year. They do not necessarily represent what is happening with the entire population across the province, as when individual units were done by each district.

One of the five old administrative regions had only one unit surveyed. Some units have not been done for six or seven years. MNR has used computer models to estimate a provincial population that might “correct” these errors.

In the past, the model has produced results that are 20 per cent higher than the sum of individual units. This will/has led to wrong management decisions. Managers must recognize that WMU population estimates are “estimates”, and subject to error. They are important numbers, but must be put in the context of what is happening in similar surrounding units to understand what is happening in all of them. That has not been done and creates some interesting things regarding tag quotas.

Total tags were reduced by 1,108, almost eight per cent of last year. Most of the reduction was in adult tags, with a 33-per-cent tag loss in that group since 2018.

Interesting things with numbers

There are some amazing things about the quotas. First, all of the tag reductions appear to come only from the units surveyed this year. While the population in WMU 58 dropped six per cent and is still within the population objective range (POR), tags were increased 39 per cent. The estimate in WMU 63 increased by four moose, so eight more tags were added.

Looks like an act of desperation. There was no apparent thought given to the possibility that the populations in unsurveyed units might also be declining — as the harvest history suggests. Second, the individual WMU estimates were treated as exact and real populations. Even though the changes defy biological reality, that was ignored. These things show an astonishing level of ignorance about MNR information systems and a lack of basic understanding of moose population dynamics.

And then there is WMU 13. This unit is the centre of a special study on why moose are not increasing although hunting has been essentially stopped for over a decade. The population increase of 57 per cent in four years is unbelievable (literally), but tags were increased 600 per cent, from 25 to 175.

It was described as a “small increase in harvest to allow for further population growth”. What about “no increase in harvest to let it grow faster”? I’ll bet the researchers, who prefer to keep variables as constant as possible, will be really pleased with that. It will certainly increase the opportunity to study the impact of hunting, so they might agree, especially if other factors aren’t showing promise. I’m all in favour of that.

Remember that possibility of an 80-per-cent decline in the moose population? You may also remember how MNR constantly describes using adaptive management (to learn from things that don’t go as planned).

Well, instead of keeping those potentially “successful” strategies in units that have increased, or expanding them in other units to see if growth continues, MNR is going to decrease the populations in those units.

They are increasing tags “to maintain the population within the POR”. There have been no studies to demonstrate that populations above the POR are causing damage to the ecosystem. While there is considerable factual evidence, this is the first, unequivocal statement that wildlife managers knowingly do not use adaptive management.

They didn’t consider how overachieving on some individual units might contribute to achieving Cervid Ecological Zone POR objectives, should other units not succeed. Moose are at 20 per cent of their historic level, and hunters, harvests, economic and cultural benefits are way down, yet MNR managers want to shoot moose back to some computer-generated level, that used overharvested populations in forests that have never been demonstrated to be good moose habitat as the data.

The POR has nothing to do with ecosystems, carrying capacity or the potential of the land to create benefits for Ontario residents from moose. PORs were an exercise to justify conditions in 2009 and cover-up MNR’s failure to manage for population growth.

Original targets have been reduced several times simply because the population failed to increase due to overhunting. The plus side is that MNR isn’t “increasing the harvest to bring populations to the lower POR to increase moose killing opportunities.” In fact, it is exactly what they are doing. They just aren’t stating it.

How was winter?

Meanwhile, this seems to have been an exceptionally hard winter. It was described by a sample of my northern contacts as extra long, typically cold, and with extra deep snow, especially late in the season.

Things seem to be better near Kenora. One of the very few bright spots in wildlife management information is the snow station system. These courses have been run since 1953, mainly for deer. They have largely been maintained by dedicated staff who oversee them and understand the value of the system. Information is used for setting deer tag quotas. An impressive data set but not needed for what I have to say. Knowing it is an abnormally severe winter is enough to describe how I would approach 2026 tag quotas.

Long periods of deep snow will reduce survival of last year’s calves and will affect the birthrate from stressed cows this spring. That cannot necessarily be tested by comparing the calf component of the 2025-2026 aerial surveys with previous years.

Surveys start in December and the majority of calf mortality might be expected later in the winter. I’d compare the percentage of calves seen each week of the survey period to see if there is a decline, and plan harvests based on estimates from the last week, if necessary. MNR has been unable to provide me with useful inventory plot data since 2021. Someone screwed up the data sets and they couldn’t repair them. At least that’s what they told the Freedom of Information Act co-ordinator. Not my job to analyse this stuff, so it isn’t important. But I’d still love to see what it tells me.

Further decline is inevitable

Effective management to maintain or increase populations would dictate a significant reduction in the harvest of “adults” (because it includes last year’s calves, now yearlings) and probably complete cessation of a calf harvest this fall.

If I was managing, I would have made a very concerted and long-running effort to educate hunters that short-term pain will produce long-term gain, and I think most would accept those reductions.

The long-term pain currently experienced by hunters is because managers offered short-term gain in tags, at the expense of the population and future hunting opportunities. Of course, my approach would depend on effective harvest control and tag distribution systems which do not exist and probably won’t for many years.

Because the tag allocation process takes four months, quotas must be set before winter severity is fully known. This is the first year they are publicly demonstrating that they do use current population estimates, although they aren’t putting any thought into how to use them. They just don’t have the time, especially when winter wasn’t over at the time quotas were set.

I’m wondering when the scholars at MNR are going to realize the program is a colossal and embarrassing failure. They need to build a solid and effective management system and start to do some real management to increase the population.

The bottom line is that MNR managers are ignoring a general population decline, misunderstanding the quality of information collected, increasing tags based on unreliable individual population estimates and failing to include additional factors such as winter severity. The further decline in everything moose is inevitable.

I have written (perhaps in private correspondence) that unless the moose management system starts to provide direct and predictable control on the harvest, and there is co-management with First Nations, moose hunting will probably have to stop within a decade.

This would not actually happen because it would be clear proof that MNR had failed. They would never admit that as long as people remembered what a moose looked like or that they once lived in Ontario. Very few people know that woodland caribou exist here, so MNR is under no real pressure to protect them as is required by law.

There are three pieces of evidence to support my speculation that “recreational” moose hunting will not stop until moose are declared “threatened”, and that unregulated subsistence harvest won’t stop until they are “endangered”.

First, Bruce Ranta wrote an article on bobwhite quail for the annual hunting special of Ontario-Out-of-Doors. Bobwhite historically ranged to southern Georgian Bay and east to Kingston. With loss of habitat and severe winters, only a few remained in the late 1950s. Although there were few, if any quail, the hunting season was not closed until 2007. Ironically, my MSc research (in Kansas) was on energy obtained by bobwhite from different seeds (including marijuana).

Between 1998 and 2001, 450 elk were reintroduced to Ontario under the proposition that they would enhance biodiversity. Within 10 years, and before the population was well-established, hunting was permitted.

This suggests an ulterior and hypocritical motive by MNR for the reintroduction. Elk were originally brought to the Burwash Prison Farm in the 1920s, along with bison. They were slaughtered to prevent an outbreak of giant liver fluke among the cattle raised to feed prisoners. Some of both species escaped and were living in the wild near Killarney.

The last bison was killed by poachers in the late 1960s. Elk survived but have not thrived due to railway accidents, drowning, predation and poaching. A recent CBC article featured one of the original proponents of the reintroduction. He suggested that hunting should be banned, and other factors introduced to insure their survival.

Although tag numbers have been reduced to zero in five of eight zones, the season has not been closed or the other measures taken.

Finally, my PhD research was on “grey” squirrels (black is a colour phase). They were common in southern Ontario, north to about Parry Sound, with some around Sault Ste. Marie (in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence forest). There were a few (illegal introductions?) in places like Thunder Bay and Sudbury. Fox squirrels have never lived in Ontario.

When I joined MNR in 1976, there were hunting seasons for grey and fox squirrels all across Northern Ontario, hundreds of kilometres beyond their range. Open seasons still exist in most northern units. Clearly it doesn’t require a self-sustaining, or any population at all to permit hunting — and so it will be with moose in future.

MNR’s approach to ecosystems and biodiversity reminds me of the “old days” when, in order to to prove a species was expanding its range, you killed it. I don’t think they got the memo that it is no longer considered a best practice.

It makes me wonder what the MNR definition is for “sustainable management”. I suppose a population of zero animals is absolutely and perfectly sustainable. It will never decline and will always remain within the Population Objective Range.

It’s something MNR managers might be able to handle at their skill level, and there will be few complaints — except possibly to increase populations. But then they have successfully ignored that appeal for decades. Maybe that’s the real plan for moose, long seasons, lots of tags, no animals.

Alan Bisset is a retired regional moose biologist and wildlife inventory program leader with the former Ministry of Natural Resources. He has written and published many papers on moose management, both Internally and in scientific journals.