Drive by in your new Lexus, and I barely blink. Show off your McMansion with the shimmering lake view, and I’ll think it’s nice. But, tell me you just saw a moose, and I turn at least green, sometimes purple, with envy. At a party with friends I once said in despair, “There are no moose up here,” and a drunken fellow reveler informed me that we do have moose, and I was an idiot.

Turns out he was right. The northeastern corner of Minnesota is home to moose. It also turns out that I’m not a total idiot. Although Minnesota has an estimated 7,600 moose, numbers have been declining, drastically so in the northwestern part of the state. Since the early 1980s moose numbers there dropped from around 4,000 to about 100. A recent report by the Department of Natural Resources’ moose advisory committee (MAC) is concerned for the moose population here in the northeast and recommends raising the moose danger-alert level to the equivalent of yellow-orange.

Although members discussed protecting our moose population with a threatened or endangered species status, they settled on a recommendation to support a designation of Species of Special Concern. In other words, the moose is vulnerable, but won’t be legally protected at this point. Hunting can continue, but the DNR will “monitor harvest and population indicators that could initiate closure of hunting seasons.”

In foggy early mornings past I’ve seen a total of four moose along Hwy. 1 as I headed to various meetings near Finland. Once, ten years ago on the Echo Trail, I spotted a cow and calf browsing near a stream far below, and my heart went zing. I stopped the truck and watched as the two finished munching breakfast and sauntered into the woods. I suspect I’m not alone in craving moose sightings. If we are going to continue to have them in any number, the MAC recommended a few things we humans can do to help the moose population.

First, get tougher on deer, the natural host of a brain worm that doesn’t harm deer, but can be passed to moose, for which the infection can be fatal. The committee recommended managing the area’s deer population at low levels and banning deer feeding of the whitetails in the northeastern moose range. Feeding the deer tends to keep the whitetails from dispersing more widely in the winter. A concentration of deer bearing the brain worm may increase the incidence of the parasite passing to moose in the area.

Rather than one smoking gun, researchers who have necropsied hundreds of moose have found death from liver fluke, bacterial meningitis, arterial worms and unidentified conditions that resulted in starvation.

While managing deer populations may be doable, another suspected cause of moose mortality—climate change—is going to be more difficult to abate. Heat stress is considered to be a problem for the animal that was built to fare best with winter temperatures at 23 degrees F or lower. Its winter coat is made up of hollow hairs that block the cold and a thick insulating underlayer. And who could forget that noble nose, built long so that blood vessels in the nasal passages warm freezing air on the way to the lungs. When temps are too warm, the moose is stressed, just like we would be if we overdressed and couldn’t remove a couple of layers of fleece—for days.

In warmer winter temperatures, frequent in our state in recent years, one study showed a significant decline in moose survival rates. One January when temperatures rose above 23 degrees, the survival rates of radio-collared moose declined from 98 percent to the low 90s. In 2006, a total of 12 warmer days resulted in a declining spring survival rate of surveyed moose to 87 percent.

Sadly, warmer winters are a friend to the winter ticks that can infect a moose in horror-movie-worthy numbers of 30,000 to 60,000. They can cause the moose major blood loss and distraction from feeding. When moose excessively scrape on trees to remove the ticks, they also remove their own protective coat and are vulnerable to death by exposure.

Another strategy that the MAC encourages is to assure the future of sufficient wetlands and other habitats where moose browse and can find a cool reprieve from summer heat.

Because the cause of the northwestern moose decline and the threat to northeastern moose is not fully understood, the MAC also encouraged funding additional research to help define the problems moose are facing.

The group concluded that the hunting season was not yet a problem for the moose population. Since 2007, permits have been issued only to take antlered bulls, and enough of the males remain to mate with the cow population. Fewer than five percent of moose are taken by hunters.

It seems that if we want to enjoy more moose, we are directed to stop feeding deer and solve environmental problems that we already know we face. If global climate change continues in the direction it is going, we’ll be seeing the moose on posters, panting from the heat, right alongside the polar bear.

We need to make dealing with climate change a priority, or that proverbial melting iceberg is going to get mighty crowded. And when the only moose sightings we enjoy are on posters, I would, sadly, be right. There would be no moose up here. And we would all feel like idiots.