Lingering Moose Shuts Down Popular Adirondack Trail for a Month
On Monday, more than a month later, the moose was still there, and the Goodman Mountain trail was still closed as state wildlife experts sought to determine why the huge animal continued to linger.
The most likely explanation for its 'unusual behaviors,' the Department of Environmental Conservation said, was 'an underlying illness' that was causing the moose to remain 'not responsive to attempts to move it off' the trail.
'The trail will remain closed to protect the moose and ensure public safety in the event of a close encounter with the public,' the department said in a news release on Friday. 'Moose are large animals, and while no signs of aggression have been observed, moose can be dangerous if approached too closely.'
The unusually long closure of the mile-and-a-half-long trail, in Horseshoe Lake Wild Forest near Tupper Lake, began on June 6. Then, with the moose continuing to ignore repeated efforts to shoo it away, environmental conservation staff members, including a wildlife veterinarian, visited the site on Thursday and decided the trail should stay off-limits.
Awesome to behold in the wild, moose are the largest members of the deer family and are among the largest land mammals in North America. The male, or bull, typically stands six feet tall at the shoulder, weighs up to 1,400 pounds and lives seven years on average.
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