It’s no bull, moose tracking app gets thousands of submissions
Tool designed by a U of A team managed by the Alberta Conservation Association
Alberta’s moose-tracking app saw nearly 14,000 submissions last year, more than four times the number when it was launched in 2012.
The Alberta Conservation Association has taken over managing the app and collecting the data submitted by hunters, a news release from the University of Alberta said Monday.
Mark Boyce, a conservation association endowed chair and professor at the U of A, and a team of ecologists with the university’s department of biological sciences developed the app.
While population modelling in big-game animals, including moose, is important for understanding how many animals are in the province and where they are, it’s an expensive and risky business for researchers.
Biologists have traditionally tracked moose populations by helicopter.
With the app — inspired by similar projects in Sweden and Norway and developed by Boyce’s team and an undergraduate student with the university’s faculty of computing sciences — hunters are asked to record where and when they see moose in the wild.
“This allows us to detect and understand the impact of changes in harvest regulations, disease outbreaks, territory shifts and potentially even climate change,” Boyce said in the release.
Hunters first input their wildlife identification number, as well as the wildlife management unit they’re in, before entering how many moose they saw that day and how many hours they spent in the area.
“At the end of every day, your phone will emit the sound of a cow moose in heat to remind you to enter data,” Boyce said in the release, adding the app can record the data off-line and automatically upload it once the phone is back within range of cellular service.
The Moose Hunter Survey app was first shared through the Alberta Fish and Wildlife division of the provincial ministry of environment and parks in 2012.
“They simply contacted everyone who drew a moose tag and invited them to participate in the project,” Boyce said in the release.
That year, the app recorded 3,000 submissions.
The app is available for both iPhone and Android phone users on the Moose Hunter Survey website at www.biology.ualberta.ca/moose.