44th North American Moose Conference set June 14-17 at Idaho State University

The 44th North American Moose Conference and Workshop 2009 will be held at Idaho State University’s Pocatello campus June 14-17. The theme of the conference is “Population, Behavioral and Landscape Ecology of Moose: Implications for Theory and Management.” Most conference activities will be at the ISU Life Sciences Lecture Center (Building 67), Room 10.

The event’s capstone address is:

• “Would a Moose by any other Name Smell as Sweet? Taxonomy, Genetics and Why There is Only a Single Species of Moose,” by Kris J. Hundertmark, Institute of Arctic Biology, and Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

Meeting highlights include the following plenary sessions:

• “History of Moose Management In Utah,” by L. Wolfe, Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT; Anis Aoude, Division of Wildlife Resources, Salt Lake City, UT; and Kreig Rasmussen, Fish Lake National Forest, Richfield, UT.

• “Harvest Modeling for Moose,” by Mark S. Boyce, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; and Cailin Xu, Nature Conservancy, Amherst, MA.

• “Implications of Consultation to Manitoba’s Declining Moose Population,” by Vince Crichton, Wildlife & Ecosystem Protection Branch, Saulteaux Crescent, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

• “Fifty Years of Food and Foraging in Moose: Lessons in Ecology from a Model Herbivore,” by Lisa Shipley, Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

• “Moose Hunting Policy – Are We Shooting Ourselves in the Foot,” by John M. Fryxell, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada; and J. Baker, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario, Canada.

• “Metrics of Predation: Perils of Predator-Prey Ratios,” by Terry Bowyer, John Kie  and Kevin L. Monteith, Department of Biological Sciences, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID; and David K. Person, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Ketchikan, AK.

The conference also will feature a workshop titled “Home Range Tools (HRT) for ARC GIS: A User’s Workshop,” taught by John Kie from the Department of Biological Sciences at ISU and Arthur Rodgers, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

Conference participants will be able to take a field trip to Camas National Wildlife Refuge.

For more information on the conference and a complete schedule, visit http://www.isu.edu/bios/mooseconference.shtml. Information also is available by contacting Terry Bowyer, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, Idaho State University, at (208) 282-3765.