Teacher hopes project leaves kids bullish about moose

The students are in teacher Tim Lundt's biology classes at Mat-Su Career and Technology High School. Lundt has gained recognition for doing unconventional projects with his students, such as reassembling moose skeletons and manning an observatory where people can view the night sky.

He said this project will teach students about local forests and moose habitat and will inform other upcoming projects, such as making a map of all the moose-vehicle collisions that happened in the Valley last year.

The danger of hitting a moose while driving is something many sophomores can relate to.

"More and more kids (on the trip) are starting to drive," Lundt said Tuesday. Some students have already experienced close calls with moose while driving, he said.

Lundt volunteers as a youth coordinator for the Alaska Moose Federation, a group seeking to boost the moose population by improving moose habitat and reducing the number of moose killed by vehicles each year.

The Moose Federation is working with Lundt on the school project. The organization loaned a snow cat and driver for the morning so students could travel easily into snowy ditches to count moose tracks and identify whether the tracks were made by juvenile or adult moose.

Gary Olson, founder of the Moose Federation, said he believes teaching students about habitat management will pay off.

"The best emissaries of moose stewardship are these kids," Olson said.

WHITE SPRUCE, BLACK SPRUCE

Lundt brought his students to a 160-acre homestead parcel that has been in Greg Bell's family since the 1950s. Bell owns Valley Sawmill on Alsop Road. Lundt said the property is ideal for study because several areas on it have been cleared and are now home to new tree growth. Bell said his family cleared the land to satisfy homestead requirements and for other reasons.

Bell said he offered his land because it has a range of habitat and supports a lot of moose, along with wolves, bears and other animals.

"It's thick with moose here," Bell said. "It's really important that people understand what it takes to grow critters. We have had to create a lot of habitat."

Groups of students estimated tree height and counted types of trees in a white spruce and birch forest that Bell said was likely 50 years old, and then marched down a bulldozed trail to land dense with black spruce. A few hundred yards away, another group of students counted young trees in 66-foot circles in an area Bell said was cleared about 15 years ago.

While counting trees and analyzing tracks, the students, mostly sophomores, shattered snow clumps against trees and goofed around in the crystallized snow.

But they were learning along the way. After returning from counting trees in an older forested area, 15-year-old Sam Matlock said his group found a lot of black spruce. That's not a good food source, he said.

"They can use that for cover," said 16-year-old Josh Hicks.

MOOSE VS. ROADS

The projects the students are working on are funded by two grants: $5,000 from Toshiba and $14,400 from the state Department of Transportation. The Toshiba grant paid for electronics that students will use to make and post videos about their project in an effort to convince more science teachers to get their classes involved.

Lundt said the Department of Transportation grant will help pay for field trips, printing moose-vehicle collision maps, and for public awareness ads warning people to watch for moose while driving.

Both Lundt and Olson said a goal they are working toward -- a principal goal of the Moose Federation -- is to encourage the state Department of Transportation to clear wider corridors along Alaska roads.

Olson said some of the best browsing areas for moose are along Alaska roads where corridors are periodically cleared.

As soon as more snow falls, Lundt and his students plan to investigate just how moose use road corridors. Lundt said he plans to take his classes to the area between Church Road and the city of Houston, an area that has a high concentration of moose-vehicle collisions, to have them track moose activity after each upcoming snowfall. He hopes to find out whether moose are crossing the road, walking parallel to it and browsing along the way, or bedding down in trees near the highway.

Bedding down can be a bad sign, Lundt said. It could mean there's good moose browse on both sides of the road. That could lead to multiple moose crossings and, in areas where their food source is close to the road, moose are more likely to get hit by vehicles.