spectr17
10-18-2002, 01:06 AM
Albino Moose Off-Limits to Idaho Hunters
October 17, 2002
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho -- A group of eastern Idahoans smitten by a white moose have persuaded the state to make the animal off-limits to hunters.
Steve Huffaker, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, made an emergency order last week making it illegal to shoot the albino cow moose, which has been spotted with a black calf on private land in game management Unit 76.
The moose hunting season opened Tuesday in the unit, a vast area that runs from Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge to the Utah and Wyoming state lines.
The move came after Fish and Game chairman Marcus Gibbs received a handful of calls from residents near Soda Spring pleading for the animal's protection.
Then, at the commission's Oct. 3 meeting, a woman presented Gibbs with a petition listing those who wanted to see the moose live through the hunting season.
"They gathered 66 signatures in a day," Gibbs said. "There's a lot of interest both within the department and the population as a whole to try to protect this moose."
The department has sent copies of Huffaker's order to all moose permit-holders in the region, and workers have called people coming from out of state to hunt moose to inform them of the situation, Gibbs said.
Albino moose have been showing up in Unit 76 for several years, said Dale Toweill, trophy species manager for the fish and game department.
Normally, only one in 100,000 moose have the albino trait, which is recessive.
For it to emerge, both parents must have the gene, and then there is still just a 25 percent chance the animal will be albino.
But the gene appears to run in the herd that lives in southeastern Idaho.
Here, Toweill theorizes, the probability of an albino moose is 1 in 10,000.
October 17, 2002
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho -- A group of eastern Idahoans smitten by a white moose have persuaded the state to make the animal off-limits to hunters.
Steve Huffaker, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, made an emergency order last week making it illegal to shoot the albino cow moose, which has been spotted with a black calf on private land in game management Unit 76.
The moose hunting season opened Tuesday in the unit, a vast area that runs from Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge to the Utah and Wyoming state lines.
The move came after Fish and Game chairman Marcus Gibbs received a handful of calls from residents near Soda Spring pleading for the animal's protection.
Then, at the commission's Oct. 3 meeting, a woman presented Gibbs with a petition listing those who wanted to see the moose live through the hunting season.
"They gathered 66 signatures in a day," Gibbs said. "There's a lot of interest both within the department and the population as a whole to try to protect this moose."
The department has sent copies of Huffaker's order to all moose permit-holders in the region, and workers have called people coming from out of state to hunt moose to inform them of the situation, Gibbs said.
Albino moose have been showing up in Unit 76 for several years, said Dale Toweill, trophy species manager for the fish and game department.
Normally, only one in 100,000 moose have the albino trait, which is recessive.
For it to emerge, both parents must have the gene, and then there is still just a 25 percent chance the animal will be albino.
But the gene appears to run in the herd that lives in southeastern Idaho.
Here, Toweill theorizes, the probability of an albino moose is 1 in 10,000.