Newfoundland's booming moose herd threatens island forests with overbrowsing

In the late 1800s officials introduced moose to Newfoundland as a dependable food source, adding four more animals in 1904. With the native Newfoundland wolf extinct by the 1930s, the herd expanded unchecked, reaching estimates of 200,000 in the 1950s and now hovering near 110,000 according to 2022 data. A single moose can eat 40-60 lb of vegetation per day, which translates to roughly 720,000-1 million metric tons of plant material annually, overwhelming the island's capacity to replace young trees and shrubs.

Overbrowsing has created open, grass-dominated “moose meadows,” especially evident in Gros Morne National Park where numbers once topped 7,000, prompting a reduction program targeting 2,000 animals. Provincial wildlife officials set area-specific hunting quotas and have increased the total licences to 28,705 for 2026-27, aiming to keep the population between 96,000 and 118,000 and mitigate forest loss.