Photos: Moose Mamas tend to orphaned calves

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A three-week-old moose, which Moose Mamas are calling Esther, stands in a pen on the Anchorage Hillside. Dana DeBernardi, founder and executive director of Moose Mamas, operates a facility on the south Anchorage hillside to rehabilitate orphan moose calves in hopes of reintroducing them into the wild. Photographed on Wednesday, June 10, 2015.

The Alaska Moose Mamas have a singular mission: to raise orphaned urban moose calves and release them into rural areas of the state suffering from flagging moose populations.

In the process, the group is trying to shake associations with its occasionally troubled predecessor, the Alaska Moose Federation, but an intertwined history and a similar mission have made that a challenge. And the nascent organization is also dealing with an ongoing debate about whether Alaska's wildlife should be nurtured by humans or left to fend for itself.

Alaska Moose Mamas executive director Dana DeBernardi is going with the former. She believes it's wasteful to let abandoned moose calves die on the sides of roads. She ardently believes in the Alaska Constitution provision that requires maximizing natural resources.

To her, the idea behind raising moose calves is not that Alaska's urban areas don't have enough -- she believes they do -- but that the issue is a geographical problem, with moose in rural parts of the state in decline or gone altogether.

"I'm tired of people fighting over the last moose," she said. "I just want to grow more moose."

Read more: Controversy lingers over Moose Mamas' mission to raise orphaned calves