Looking down through the clear water, the big footprints are clear enough that you can not only make them out, but even create a picture of the direction the moose was traveling, and track backwards to where they made their way down the bank, and where they have pushed narrow paths through the brush.
In one stretch of mudflats, down below a light sand beach that has a row of what look like coyote tracks, there’s a single moose horn in the brackish water, just a single upwards spike of horn, one other branch splintered off down to the quick. Maybe a yearling, maybe a horn lost early in some accident.
Through those mud flats, the moose tracks are as clear as if they had been made that morning, with only the edges starting to round off from where water has filled them in. It’s not unusual to see moose on the side of the estuary, head down in the browse just at the edge of the trees or in among the raspberry canes.
Along the shoulders of the road between the bridge at Piper’s Hole and Swift Current, most of the shoulder of the road is sand, and every 10 or 15 feet, you can see where a moose has either come up over the shoulder of the road at a steady pace, or else has shrugged its huge weight upwards from the deep ditch, moving fast out of the trees and across onto the road in a few short strides. Right after you get onto the Burin Peninsula highway, there’s a sign that warns you that there were 680 moose-vehicle collisions in the last year — something has run into the corner of the sign, and has broken it off.
And it is astounding to think that all these animals — all these accidents and footprints and trails and horns, all the foraged trees and chewed branches and brush — are the result of the introduction of just four animals by a provincial government that felt the province was in need of one more species that could be food for island residents.
In retrospect, it’s a strange choice, every bit as odd as the decision to bring bison to Brunette Island. The thing is that the moose turned out to be so darned successful — and why wouldn’t they? There’s not one single thing they need that the island’s ecosystem hasn’t been able to provide. Not only that, but it was an ecosystem remarkably short of anything that could actually harm the beasts.
Perfect forage, and not much — beyond humans and cars — in the way of dangers.
Kind of a match made in heaven for the strangers. Not without its costs, though: moose have changed the food web and the structure of everything from the forest underbrush to the types of species that are successful in it.
It means that the province post-moose, and the province pre-moose, are likely to be very different sorts of places. Lots of things are the same: bald eagles in the high spruce, diligent fox sparrows working noisily in under the trees for seeds, juncos and chickadees picking insects from the birch. Salmon jumping when the tide turns on the river: crows, and plenty of them, noisily fighting over the roadkill remains of two new introduced inhabitants, squirrels and rabbits.
And they’re not the only ones, either.
Leading away from the mudflats and up at the edge of the landwash, you can see the tracks of what can only be coyote — diffident footprints, these, never touching the water, carefully staying on the sand. And, interestingly, here there are at least three different sizes of prints, including ones that look like they could be pups.
Moose aren’t the only things that can change an ecosystem, nor are they the only things that could walk into an ecosystem and find nothing in their niche, or else find a niche that fits them very, very well.
Coyotes do exactly that.
They’ve got plenty in common with moose.
And chances are, they will be every bit as successful.
Moose went from four animals to 175,000.
Coyotes are more than poised to do exactly the same thing.
Oh, and in case you haven’t been watching, they’ve started already.
Russell Wangersky is The Telegram’s editorial page editor. He can be reached by e-mail at rwanger@thetelegram.com.
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