NARRATOR: Beavers, moose, and moths
don't seem to share too much in common,
but when these tree-eating animals come together
it's triple trouble
for one of Canada's oldest National Parks.
On the jagged coast of Canada's Eastern shore.
A delicate and diverse ecosystem
thrives on the fringes of the continent.
Welcome
to the Wild Wild East.
The Cape Breton's Highlands
is a vast and rugged landscape,
Acadian forest
bursting with Canada's trademark colorful leaves.
An ancient plateau,
blanketed by a boreal woodland,
And surrounding it all, the rough Atlantic Ocean.
This primeval forest is the home
of over 1000 different animal species.
But now in spite of conservationist's best efforts,
the great north woods may disappear altogether.
In the 17th century, Europe's great explorers
began crossing the Atlantic
in search of wealth and resources.
They found beavers, moose and moths,
and all the creatures of the great north world.
The forests and oceans of North America
were a vast new source
for fish, fur and wood.
During the industrial age,
demand for timber to build ships,
houses and railroads intensified.
Deforestation spread across Cape Breton
and endangered the animals
that called the Highlands home.
Today only 5% of Cape Breton's forests remain.
Saw away long enough,
and the ecosystem goes timber.
The majestic moose is Canada's biggest four-legged celebrity.
Size, strength, and perseverance
make the moose synonymous
with life in the harsh climate of the true north.
Before the Europeans arrived,
Moose roamed freely across Cape Breton Island.
The exact number is unknown,
but historic records show that in the late-1700s
over 6,000 moose were hunted annually in Cape Breton.
They weren't just killed for their meat and fur.
moose fat was a hot commodity,
used to make candles and lubricate steam engines.
But it was the moose's white-tailed cousin
that dealt the final blow.
Introduced to Cape Breton in the 1880s,
the clear-cutting of the industrial age
opened up new pastures for the deer to forage in.
As they spread across the island
they brought a nervous system parasite,
harmless to the deer, but fatal to the moose.
Finally, in the 1920s, hunting, habitat loss
and disease took their deadly toll,
And the moose disappeared completely
from Cape Breton Island.
The ecosystem was transformed.
Trees lost to loggers,
species gone extinct from Cape Breton Island,
At the beginning of the 20th century,
the fate of the forest looked bleak.
But then, in 1930, a glimmer of hope,
The Canadian government passed the National Parks Act.
This legislation protected large pockets
of Canada's wilderness from clear-cutting.
And in 1936,
the Cape Breton Highlands National Park was established,
preserving this important animal habitat.
This protected area is 20 times
the size of Manhattan,
with 1.5 million
fewer people
and more than 100 million more trees.
With their natural habitat safe,
the Park officials re-introduced the moose
back to the boreal forest.
In the 1940s, 18 moose from Alberta
were trucked across Canada.
Soon a cow moose grazing for food with her calves
became a familiar sight once again.
Normally, moose are solitary animals,
but mother and child share a special bond,
and are never far apart.
She stays with her calves through their first winter.
Her instinct is to defend them
until they're large enough to protect themselves.
Mom uses her excellent sense of smell
to detect danger,
but there are no airborne alarms here.
In Cape Breton, moose have no natural predators.
At one time, packs of wolves roamed the boreal forest,
preying on calves and adults,
but in the late-1800s,
the wolf also fell victim to hunters
and the almighty saw.
Without any predators,
these calves could live for 20 years.
At home in the protected Park
and safe from their natural enemies,
the moose's reintroduction in the 1940s
got started on the right hoof.
Weaving between the forest's hills,
and its valleys, are rivers.
They flow down the Highlands plateau,
and bring water, the source of all life,
to the creatures of the Highlands.
The rivers here are home to the iconic beaver,
the national animal of Canada,
and role model for work-a-holics around the world.
Beavers build dams across sections of the river,
which flood large parts of the forest
creating beaver ponds.
The dams have major impacts on their environments.
The largest on record
is in Buffalo National Park in Alberta,
discovered by a space satellite,
it's twice the length of the man-made Hoover Dam.
The beaver is the largest rodent in North America,
and can grow as big as a medium-sized dog.
Beavers and humans have a lot in common.
Both are warm-blooded mammals,
and both drastically alter their environment
to suit their own needs
and are quick to protect their turf.
A beaver is generally docile,
but threaten its kingdom,
and the beaver will attack by snarling, biting
and scratching with its powerful front legs.
Its front legs have nimble paws and sharp nails,
which it also uses to help build its home,
Beavers' back feet are webbed,
making them excellent swimmers.
They are truly aquatic animals,
with a protective membrane covering their eyes,
and flaps of skin to keep water out of their ears
and nose when underwater.
Beavers have two layers of thick fur,
which keep them warm as they swim underwater
during the winter.
The extraordinary quality of the beaver's fur
drove the colonization
and economy of North America in the 1600s.
Beavers barely survived their brief foray into fashion.
From 1670 onward, the Hudson's Bay Company
loaded two or three ships a year
with beaver pelts bound for England.
In one year alone,
over 130,000 beavers
were killed for the fur trade.
Beavers mostly eat leaves, buds
and inner bark of young, woody plants
that grow along their waterways.
But they'll also eat water lilies
and other aquatic vegetation.
Beavers don't actually eat trees,
though their tireless dam maintenance
could give another impression.
The beaver's work ethic is motivated
by an unusual adaptation.
Their teeth never stop growing.
Chewing keeps them short and sharp.
A beaver's most iconic, and useful feature, is its tail.
Covered in scales and sparse hair,
it serves many purposes.
In the water, the tail primarily
acts as a rudder.
But it has another important function,
Coyotes, bears, mountain lions and wolves
are the beaver's main predators.
But the beaver is only vulnerable
when it ventures onto land.
Safe in the water, he sounds an alarm bell
to alert the rest of the beaver family.
Danger lurks nearby.
The coyote's cover has been blown,
so it's off to stalk its next prey.
This tail slapping can also serve as a warning
for beavers from other colonies to stay clear.
This pond is taken.
Biologists refer to beavers as ecosystem engineers
because the wetlands they construct, create a habitat
for amphibians and other residents
of the Highlands.
And the beavers' wetlands
are a favorite foraging ground
for hungry moose,
who eat water-lilies and other aquatic plants.
They have adaptations to find food anywhere in their range,
even underwater.
Moose have a special valve that blocks the entrance
to their nostrils,
allowing them to submerge their mouths fully
and pick-out the foliage underneath.
Out of the water, a moose can strip bare
any part of a tree it can reach.
They have no upper front teeth.
They have eight sharp incisors
on their lower jaw,
and a dozen pairs of molars
that they use to chomp up the trees,
the twigs, bark, pine cones and also shrubs.
Unlike deer, cows and horses,
these grazers don't eat grass.
To survive, moose need the forest
and the wetlands.
In the decades following their re-introduction,
the moose population began to grow,
and their range began to spread beyond the Park itself.
It looked like the forest was ready
to turn over a new leaf.
But then, a new threat emerged
from another voracious herbivore.
This one is smaller than your pinky-finger.
The spruce budworm.
Every summer adult moths lay eggs
on spruce and balsam fir,
two of the most common trees in the Highlands.
The larvae spend the winter in their cocoons,
and when they emerge in the spring,
they're hungry.
The newly born caterpillars
feed off the tree's needles to fuel
their metamorphosis into a moth.
During outbreaks, there could be
over 200 hungry spruce budworms
feeding on one branch.
Normally, their population is kept low
by weather conditions, parasites
and predators like spiders and birds.
But it's a delicate balance,
and sometimes it goes off kilter.
That's exactly what happened in the 1970s
when the spruce budworm destroyed a section
of the Nova Scotian forest
half the size of the State of Vermont.
The worst hit area was right here in the Highlands.
Spruce budworm outbreaks are cyclical.
Ecologists believe they occur every 30 to 40 years.
The forest should have recovered by now,
but the burgeoning moose population
feasted on the young trees,
which slowed the forest's re-generation.
The landscape of the Highlands
was an all-you-can-eat buffet of saplings
for the moose.
In turn, their population exploded.
Since their re-introduction between 1947 and '48,
the number of moose inside the Park
has grown from 18 to 1800.
Compared to other areas,
there's now four times the number of moose
in the Highlands,
and no wolves to reduce the population numbers.
Moose are voracious herbivores.
In total, all the moose in the Highlands
eat four and a half dump trucks worth
of vegetation every day.
And now the forest is transforming once again.
Fall is the most active harvesting season for beavers.
With winter on its way,
they work overtime to fix up dams and lodges
before their pond freezes.
A recent rainfall has compromised
the beaver's territory,
and the dam has struck a leak.
If it's not patched, the beaver's pond will drain.
This will expose the lodge,
and it will no longer protect the beaver
and its family from terrestrial predators.
Rushing water is the beaver's alarm bell,
the sound triggers their instinct to build.
An experiment where a recording of rushing water
was played on dry land resulted in the beaver
covering a stereo with sticks and mud
in an attempt to silence the disturbance.
The coming winter means more trees are needed
to secure the beaver's lodge.
Mud dredged up from the bottom of the river
is used to hold the branches in place
and acts as a sealant,
keeping the lodge water-tight.
The beavers may be the hardest workers in the Wild Wild East,
but their non-stop construction
is also reducing the survival
of the trees and saplings surrounding their ponds.
As beavers transform rivers into wetlands,
they flood the forest,
Meaning beavers don't just chop down trees,
they suffocate them too.
But when the beavers leave, and the pond drains,
a fertile meadow remains in its place.
Here young trees bloom, but before they can mature,
they're eaten by moose.
As the moose population becomes more concentrated,
a new danger has hit the Highlands.
Since an adult moose weighs about as much
as a small car,
collisions can be fatal, for man and beast.
But the overpopulation of moose
is an even greater threat to the health of the Highlands,
and the other animal species that call the forest home.
Most of the animals of the Highlands
could not survive anywhere else in Cape Breton,
they have adaptations to live in the forests here.
Perched on low branches,
an adult male spruce grouse blends
perfectly into the background.
Its plumage acts as camouflage.
This is the grouse's only form of protection,
and like the moose, budworm and beaver,
it feeds off the forest,
mostly eating needles from fir trees,
If the great north woods can't recover,
the spruce grouse is just one of over a thousand species
set to lose its home.
And so Park officials are taking action
to restore the balance of the Highlands.
Atop North Mountain,
a strange structure stands in the middle of the Park.
It's called an exclosure.
The opposite of an enclosure.
It's designed to keep moose out.
The trees inside are saplings,
which a moose would devour in single sitting.
By fencing the moose out,
Park officials hope the trees inside
will grow tall enough
to survive the moose's appetite.
The Park currently has two exclosures,
both built in 2007.
The one on the Skyline Trail is the largest,
covering an area the size of nine football fields.
It's estimated that over the next five years,
plant life will grow seven times as dense
inside the protected areas.
But the outcome is uncertain.
It will be decades before the effects
of the exclosures on the Park can be measured.
And in the meantime,
the rest of forest will continue its struggle.
With the exclosures only covering
a small area of the Park, their effect is contained.
In the end, there's still too many moose
in the Cape Breton Highlands.
Fall for the moose is a special time of year,
mating season.
And it's called the rut.
The scent of a female cow draws the bull moose
from across the Highlands.
Cows are only in heat for one to two days a year.
After that they quickly lose interest.
The stakes are high for the bull.
If he doesn't manage to find a mate
in the next few weeks,
he'll have to wait another year.
It's a rare social moment,
this is the only time the solitary animals
seek out company.
But their union means that the moose population
is set to grow again in the spring,
So Park officials are exploring every option
to restore the natural balance
of the moose population.
There's even talk of bringing back an old nemesis,
the wolf.
But the effects of that management strategy
still need to be studied.
In places like Yellowstone National Park,
wolves re-introduced in 1995
had quadrupled in numbers by 2004,
but numbers have leveled off since then.
Wolf re-introduction may be considered again in the future,
but Park officials feel they need to take immediate action
to reign in the number of moose
in the Cape Breton Highlands.
In the fall of 2015,
the Park licensed hunters from the Mi'Kmaq First Nation
to kill 37 moose in the area of the forest
most affected by hyper abundance.
This cull has been a subject of controversy,
but officials believe it's necessary
to protect all the animals of the Highlands.
With a new year on its way,
the future remains uncertain for the animals
of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
It's still not known what, if any, impact
the moose cull will have.
And there are signs
that another spruce budworm outbreak
may be on its way.
But there's a glimmer of hope,
The Park's protected status
keeps out the clear-cutters,
And exclosures secure a small piece
of the forest's future.
The ultimate goal is simple,
return the forest to its former glory
and restore this important animal habitat.
It's a balancing act
in the Wild Wild East.
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