UMD Student Studies Winter Ticks and Moose

FINLAND - It's no secret Minnesota’s moose population is drastically dropping.  That's whyt students at UMD are investigating why the moose are dying off.

Minnesotans are well acquainted with wood and deer ticks, but they aren't the ones eating away at the moose population.

They're called winter ticks, and it's just one reason why researchers believe the moose population is on the downward spiral.

Juliann Terry transitions from a typical classroom to the quiet woods of Finland Minnesota.

She makes the 70-mile trip up the shore to hunt for winter ticks.

“Couldn't have asked for a better field season,” Terry explained.

She uses a white piece of wool clamped to a stick then drags it across trees looking for tiny red dots, also known as winter ticks.

“Winter ticks are distributed throughout the whole United States, and we only are worried about them in moose range because they're killing moose,” said Terry.

The tiny ticks hang out on plants about chest high, so when a moose leans down to eat, the ticks jump on for a winter ride.

“They kind of do a barrel of monkey's sorts of things and they hold on and catch on to everybody else.”

Come spring, the moose becomes a mating ground and the females fall off, and where ever they fall is where they are finding the ticks.

According to Terry’s research, nearly every Canadian moose is infested with 10,000 ticks.

“That's a lot of ticks,” Terry said, “We didn't think that was possible.”

Once large amounts of ticks latch on to the moose, they start to lose hair and large amounts of blood.

It's possible for them to get enough winter ticks on them to kill them, but it's more likely that is just weakens their system.

With the combination of a weak immune system, and mother nature’s predators, Terry believes winter ticks are not the number one cause of the dying Minnesota moose.

“We just know that they get on moose and that sometimes when they're in a large enough quantity they kill moose,” she said.

Terry hopes to publish her work on winter ticks in Minnesota to help researchers figure out more about the moose population.

She is set to graduate UMD winter 2014.