More bad news for the dwindling "CO2-kills-moose" crowd: Minnesota moose deliver twice the expected rate of twin calves after mild winter of 2011-2012, but bears "hammer the calves" during 2013's snowy, cool spring

Nearly half of the 49 newborn Minnesota moose fit with GPS collars just days ago have died | Northland Outdoors | Fargo, ND

Within days of finishing a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources effort to capture 49 moose calves and fit them with GPS transmitter collars, 22 of the newborns already have died, most killed by black bears and wolves.
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“Especially in the last few days, bear and to some extent wolves have just been hammering the calves,”
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This year’s late snow, cool spring and delayed green-up in the forest might have pushed more bears to find calf moose.
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“You could have 100 percent of the calves survive and that wouldn’t solve our problem,” DelGiudice said. “Our problem (in Northeastern Minnesota) is that too many adults are dying; not enough are surviving to reproduce to sustain the population.”
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DelGiudice said the calf study already has revealed new findings not previously known of Minnesota moose calves. For example, a whopping 58 percent of the cows that delivered calves this month had twins. Based on other studies and estimates, researchers had been expecting only a 20 to 30 percent rate of twin births.

“That just blew us away. This may have it roots back in the (mild) winter of 2012, that more cows went into the rut and into this past winter healthy and with higher body weights and could sustain twins,” he said.
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Of the 22 that had died through Wednesday, DelGiudice said as many as eight may have perished from circumstances surrounding the capture process, but that a final number won’t be known until all lab results come in.