Webinar: Moose Habitat Planning Project: Collaborative planning for large-scale moose habitat restoration in NE MN

Photo credit Ryan Pennesi, USFS Superior NF

Moose are an iconic wildlife species in Minnesota, with cultural and subsistence importance to the Tribal Nations in northeastern Minnesota, who retain hunting rights. Unfortunately, Minnesota’s moose population has declined about 50% over the past 20 years due to a host of overlapping and compounding issues including parasites, predation, habitat decline and a changing climate. As researchers continue to study these issues, habitat restoration at a large-scale (>10,000 acres) is recognized as being a management action that could be particularly beneficial to moose. There has, however, been a lack of habitat restoration at this scale due to challenges such as the patchwork of tribal, federal, state, county, and private land ownership and governance structures, lack of timber markets and limited economic incentives necessary for forest management. The Moose Habitat Planning Project, initiated in June 2023 and funded by an America the Beautiful Challenge grant, is bringing together professionals from 15+ organizations in a series of five collaborative workshops over the next year. The objectives of the workshops are to bring clarity to the social, political, ecological and economic challenges facing moose habitat restoration, identify strategies for addressing those challenges, and develop an implementation plan for three large habitat priority areas within the core moose range in northeastern Minnesota. With the project anticipated to wrap up at the end of November 2024,  this presentation will provide a complete review of the project, outcomes of the workshops, overview of the implementation plan and next steps to fund and carry out the planned restoration actions. The insights gained from this project will be helpful for moose habitat restoration work but also for other natural resource and forest management activities in this region.

Each webinar is rated for one CAT1 credit; participants, keep an eye on the chat for the link to the webinar CE request form towards the end of the hour. We will record each webinar and post it on the SFEC YouTube Channel. Recordings are typically available within one week of the live broadcast.