Young moose, like the one pictured, become overwhelmed by ticks. Many don't make it to the next spring. Photo: EcoPhotography.
Eric Orff is a veteran wildlife biologist with over 50 years of experience tagging, monitoring, and conserving a variety of species in New Hampshire. He’s worked at the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game, the National Wildlife Federation, and the New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission. Now retired, Eric continues his tireless work to keep the state’s wildlife thriving through his social media accounts and his role as vice president of the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation. From ducks to moose to bears – Eric has worked with them all. And he’s seen how climate change affects these species.
What brought you to wildlife biology?
I grew up in far northern Maine, in Aroostook County. At age 7 or 8, I was already telling my folks that I wanted to be a forest ranger who worked with animals. Then I took the National Rifle Association Hunter Safety Course at 14 and really fell in love. I joined my town’s local fish and game club and have been a member since. That carried me through my teenage years until I went to school at the University of New Hampshire and got a Bachelor of Science in wildlife management.
I’ve also been a longtime outdoor writer, capturing the details about my work. I started to write about winter disappearing before my own eyes. As a kid in the 1960s, I had put some duck nesting boxes in the local marsh behind my house. During my lifetime, I have witnessed the ice at that marsh, Little Cohass Marsh, simply disappear. As a biologist returning to that marsh in the 1980s and early 1990s, I could use a snow machine to check duck boxes in the wintertime. But by the late 1990s or early 2000s, there wasn’t really enough snow to use a snow machine. By the time I retired in 2007, there was almost no ice.
You’ve spoken in the past about moose population declines. How has warming temperatures affected this species?
I was deeply involved with moose research in New Hampshire. In the 1980s, we had healthy moose. Mostly every cow, once it was 2 years old, had calves every year. Typically, the older females, older than age 2 or 3, had twin calves. Over my career, as the climate has warmed, our moose numbers went through a precipitous decline from around 10,000 in the late 1990s down to about 3,000 in the state by the late 2010s. And now, only half of the cows have calves at all. Back in the 1990s, hunters were issued 650 moose hunting permits. Last year, there were 33 issues.
Warming temperatures pose two threats. First, moose aren’t built for the warmer weather. It’s got to be below 70 degrees for a moose to feed. Because of our warmer years, particularly our summers, the moose are feeding less, so they don’t put on enough weight to successfully carry a calf. They are physically stressed all the time. Now, half of the cows are barren because they’re in such poor health. And if they do give birth, they only produce one calf.
Next are ticks. The winter tick is the bane of the moose. In November, young ticks do something called “questing,” where they hang out together, thousands at a time, in a big ball. They wait to get on an animal, like the moose. If there’s no snow, the moose become covered with ticks, which engorge themselves and transform over the winter. By springtime, April, the female ticks are dropping off the moose to lay their eggs. If they land in snow, their eggs aren’t as successful at hatching. Warming temperatures means many winters have no snow in November and very little snow in April. So, the tick population has increased dramatically. That has resulted in upwards of 70% of moose calves born in the previous spring dying by the end of April because they’re so weak from having their blood drained all winter.
Compared to the last few years, this winter has been colder and longer. Some might feel like temperatures aren’t really rising. How would you respond to that?
One winter is not a trend.
And the fact is, we are still in a drought. We actually had a snow deficit compared to the long-term average. Drought paired with heat still impacts the moose. And it’s not just the moose that are being impacted. There are a lot of water wells in New Hampshire that have gone the way of moose. They are dry; they’re gone.
Given your tenure in this field, what inspires you to keep fighting to conserve wildlife like moose?
We have a lot of work left to do.
As an outreach consultant for the National Wildlife Federation, it was my job to convince New Hampshire folks that climate change was happening, it was impacting our fish and wildlife, and particularly moose. It took more than a decade – working with Kris Rines (former New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist), Dr. Pam Hunt (New Hampshire Audubon’s Senior Biologist for Avian Conservation), and Jessica Carloni (New Hampshire Fish and Game Marine Biologist) – to convince our New Hampshire conservatives.
Now, I think New Hampshire is largely a place where the majority believe climate change is happening. I look at the successes I’ve witnessed over my lifetime. We went from 1,200 bears in the mid-1980s to around 6,000 now. Deer went from 40,000 to 120,000. Eagles from none to 100 pairs. The state is such a dramatically improved place with wildlife compared to when I started 60 years ago. It’s been a dramatic recovery.
I’d hate to see us lose it. We can’t reverse half a century of work. I’ve turned to YouTube and Facebook to continue my efforts to educate about moose, wildlife, and the impacts of climate change. I grew the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation’s Facebook page to 19,000 followers, and the page hit two million views just this month. So, I’m happy my voice is being heard and is being used to make better decisions. We have to do more, and we have to keep at it.
You can follow Eric’s work on his Facebook page, his YouTube Channel, and the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation’s Facebook page. You can also read more about Eric’s work in his recently published book What’s Wild: A Half Century of Wisdom from the Woods and Rivers of New England with fifty stories from his more than half century as a wildlife biologist in New Hampshire.
