LANSING – The majestic moose, that most magnificent icon of the Upper Peninsula wilds, faces a deadly threat from warming temperatures, shifting habitat and the introduction of diseases.

For now, the 460 moose in the U.P. – excluding those on Isle Royale - are holding their own.  Their numbers have been increasing annually in the western U.P., according to Dean Beyer with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in Marquette.            

But rising temperatures, as predicted by climate models, could threaten moose, one of the U.P.’s largest mammals, which have already moved to the northernmost part of their range. 

“Between the high temperatures and parasites, their numbers would go down,” said Steve Schmitt, a supervisor at the Rose Lake Department of Natural Resources (DNR) wildlife disease lab in Clinton County.  

An estimated 60 U.P. moose die each year, according to the DNR.

Beyer said moose in the U.P. currently have a lower pregnancy rate than the national average.  If the animals are stressed by heat, the rate could go down.

Moose have a difficult time cooling off in the summer because their bodies are large and dark.  Increased heat could interfere with their foraging in the summer and impair their survival.

“They can keep themselves warm in cold temperatures but, unfortunately, that works against them in warmer temperatures,” Beyer said. 

“It’s a question of them being able to forage in the summertime,” he said.

Warming temperatures also pose the threat of spreading diseases such as brain worms, which can paralyze, blind or even kill a moose. 

Currently, brain worm kills 2 percent of the moose that die in the U.P.

The parasite cannot survive in extremely cold climates, but as the white-tailed deer move north due to warming temperatures, so does the worm.  Deer are now found in the Lake Superior watershed, where high snow and low temperatures used to prevent their survival. 

Larvae, living in a deer’s brain, travel from its central nervous system into the lungs, where they are coughed into the mouth, swallowed and passed through the intestinal tract with the feces, according to theMichigan State University Extension and Agriculture Experiment Station in East Lansing.

Snails and slugs pick up the larvae from the deer feces, then climb on vegetation that is eaten by moose, Beyer said.

The result is what many experts nickname “moose sickness” or “moose disease,” characterized by weakness, fearlessness, lack of coordination of movement, circling, deafness, impaired vision, paralysis and subsequent death, according to a report by the University of Northern British Columbia.

Deer may show no symptoms while carrying the worms.

Michigan’s moose gained popularity in the mid-1980s in a historic operation called the Michigan moose lift.

The animals were airlifted as far as 14 miles from Ontario to the U.P.  Twenty-nine survived the arduous journey, according to the DNR.