“Moose are basically all nose and head. They're very like front heavy, and they're just kind of ridiculous lumbering looking animals.”
That’s Melanie McEntee, a master’s student studying moose-human interactions in northeastern Utah. The area offers ideal moose habitat, with aspen forests, willows and plenty of water — alongside year-round recreation.
“So, this combination of year-round recreation, good habitat, and then also moose just being generally less afraid of humans than other ungulates," McEntee explained. "They make their way into human habitats more and more frequently.
McEntee said research indicates that moose may even prefer areas modified by humans.
“Studies have shown that moose actually tend to prefer walking on recreational trails over unmaintained wild areas, unlike other ungulates,” McEntee said.
To understand where people and moose overlap, McEntee has been setting up camera traps across trails in Summit and Wasatch counties. By comparing moose sightings with human recreation, she hopes to map areas where these encounters are more likely to happen.
But using cameras to monitor these interactions raises privacy concerns.
McEntee said she processes the footage with closed software that protects people’s identities.
“So closed software here just means that it's not cloud-based, … and these softwares do two things," she explained. "One of them sorts the footage into three different categories, and then blurs the entire face and body of each human detected. … So, really, by the time I look at the footage, the people photos are blurred so thoroughly that I would never be able to identify them.”
She said her research seeks to understand how many people are using the trails and what activities they’re doing, they are not collecting personal information.
But human recreation is only part of the picture. Ph.D. student Adrien Bastidas is investigating how Utah’s changing climate could affect moose.
She examines how these cold-adapted animals respond to warmer temperatures and increased parasite exposure.
“So, like Alaska, where it's going to be a lot colder year-round, or even northern Canada, we don't get those cold temperatures annually here," Bastidas explained. "Like, we get very hot summers, and so with hot summers also come an increased amount of parasites.”
Parasites have contributed to serious declines in moose populations.
“On the East Coast we had a problem where moose about 75% of their calves would just die," Bastidas said. "And that's a huge detriment for an animal that doesn't already have like a high survival rate for calves.”
Utah hasn’t experienced that same level of calf mortality, but Bastidas said that could change as temperatures rise and snowpack declines.
“If our summers are to get hotter, or if we get less snow, kind of how we did this previous year, we might have some kind of drop off in moose numbers," she explained. "And that could be really alarming, especially for people that care deeply about these animals.”
A warmer climate, however, does pose some potential benefits, such as improved calf survival during milder winters. That leaves researchers trying to understand how these effects will ultimately shape Utah’s moose population.
“There’s two different ways that it could either positively benefit them, or just have this really steep kind of decline," Bastidas explained. "But where that direction is playing, we don't know yet. ”
Together, the two projects could help land managers anticipate changes in moose population and behavior and make decisions that protect both moose and people.
In the meantime, both researchers urge visitors to keep dogs leashed, make their presence known on trails and give moose plenty of space. If you encounter a moose, back away rather than trying to pass it.
