Moose in the Willows

If you see a huge, dark, long legged animal standing in the willows here, you are looking at a moose, and it is worth knowing that these giants are relative newcomers to Colorado. Historically, moose were only rare and transient visitors to this region. There was one account from the eighteen sixties of a moose shot near what is now Estes Park, but experts concluded there was never an established population here.

That changed in the late nineteen seventies. In nineteen seventy eight and nineteen seventy nine, the Colorado Division of Wildlife brought in about a dozen moose each year from the Uinta Mountains of Utah and from Grand Teton in Wyoming, releasing them near the town of Rand, just west of the Never Summer Mountains, to build up a herd for wildlife watching and hunting. It worked.

In nineteen eighty, the first moose was spotted inside the national park, right here in the Kawuneeche Valley, and the animals have thrived ever since. A single moose can eat more than fifty pounds of willow a day, and willow makes up the great majority of its summer diet. That appetite has reshaped the valley.

So the moose you are admiring is both a magnificent wild animal and a living piece of a nineteen seventies wildlife experiment that turned out even better than its planners hoped.