On October This morning, Josh Blouin was standing outside an old store on Island Pond, Vermont, ten miles[16 km]south of the Canadian border, preparing – hopefully – to see a deer. Dressed in neoprene boots and a buffalo coat, Blouin, a wildlife expert at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, drank his coffee and explained that he would use telemetry to search for one of the largest animals, but a closer look would require a gradual crawl. and quietly through the woods (which were, hardly, covered with crispy fallen leaves).
For Blouin, it’s a habit. Most days starting in 2017, they wear hiking boots, rain boots, or snowshoes and walk through the dense Vermont jungle to check out the department’s deer herd to find out why the population there has dropped by 45 percent. less than ten years. Blouin’s work has revealed shocking statistics, which he and his colleagues wrote in a paper this summer. On average, from 2017 to 2019, only 66 percent of moose babies survived the first 60 days. Only 49 percent survived the first winter. The birth rate dropped by half.
What kills these big animals? Tiny ticks.
It turned out that Blouin was not the only one looking for a deer that day. Beginning in October, winter ticks begin “searching for other species — living in groups of 1,000 or more, tying each other’s legs so that when one tick grabs a passerby, they all board the ship. Ticks look like warm-blooded birds, but deer make excellent calls. Not only do deer have a habit of decorating themselves, but they also provide an eight-inch-long[8 cm]coat, keeping the ticks “nice and warm,” says Blouin. “They live a good life.”
Unlike other ticks, which spend several days on the birds, which transmit the disease, the winter ticks are mixed with the season, dissolving from the larvae to the nymph to an adult within five months, not spreading the disease but eating too much. blood. Moose calves, who live about six months in the early winter, are less likely to produce enough blood to regenerate themselves. By spring they are anemic, malnourished, and mentally disturbed. Blouin said: “He dies terribly and slowly.
They call Apple the “dead moon”. This is when radio transmitters send messages to his cell phone — up to three times a day — that the moose has stopped moving. The Blouin corpse that is taken to release nerves is thin, almost bald, and has 70,000 ticks. “These huge animals are twisted, skin and bones. It’s very sad, ”she says. Even winter deer that survive the winter come out weak and barren.
Winter ticks are not uncommon in this area, but mild weather is a result of climate change. Tall shoots and late snow give ticks more time to find the recipient. Old springs are also beneficial for pathogens, which eventually release the moose in April. When the female ticks fall on the snow, they die; when it lands on leaf litter, it lays up to 4,000 eggs. In New England, the weather was wonderful. Now it is a habit.