Alaska Fish & Wildlife News
March 2025
Young Moose in Northwest Alaska
Sara Henslee's Moose Research
Near Nome, Alaska, in the vast arctic landscape of Game Management Unit 22, a Super Cub airplane traces the sky. In one of the two seats is Sara Henslee, a state wildlife biologist in Northwest Alaska and a UAF Masters student in Wildlife Biology & Conservation. Below her, she sees caribou, ambling bears and of course, her research subject—the wild moose living in the Northwestern part of our state.
More specifically, Henslee’s research takes a look at moose that are 10 to 11 months old, or “short yearlings,” and determines what they can tell us about the future of the overall population. Her work involves aerial radio tracking of collared moose, collecting data through field work and then using it to perform several different types of analysis and population modeling.
She conducts her field work each May from a small Super Cub fixed-wing plane, a Cessna 185 plane or even sometimes on foot. By flying at 5,000 feet in an aircraft equipped with multiple antennaes and a receiver, she can pick up Very High Frequency (VHF) signals from collars on the individual wild moose.
“You’re basically listening for beeps through a lot of static,” she said. “After radio tracking every day for a week, you start to hear beeping in your dreams!”
Henslee also flies in an R-44 helicopter to locate and collar newborn calves, which allows her to collect vital data about how the moose are doing. She collects data about both calves and adults, including mass, survival rate and calving rate.
“Short yearlings are commonly captured and weighed by moose managers in Alaska,” said Henslee, “and there is a lot of interest in learning what the mass of a short yearling can tell us about the future of that moose, like her future potential for producing calves or the survival of those calves, for example.”
As the area management biologist for Game Management Unit 22, Henslee’s job is to keep track of game populations in an area of coastal land that stretches all the way from the lower Norton Sound to just into the Arctic Circle. She does important work in monitoring populations for the purposes of hunting management. By keeping track of moose populations, she can ensure hunters have access to the meat they need while protecting the delicate ecology of game animals living in balance with humans, other species and the natural landscape.
This article by Zeke Shomler first appeared in The Sun Star, an independent student-run news organization funded by the University of Alaska Fairbanks student body and is reprinted with permission.
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