Moose-hunt hotline would save lives: N.L. group

A citizens group wants the Newfoundland and Labrador government to set up a hotline so hunters can be dispatched quickly to shoot moose near highways before they tangle with traffic.

The latest proposal by the Save Our People Action Committee aims to reduce the more than 700 moose-vehicle collisions in the province every year.  

Committee leader Eugene Nippard of Grand Falls-Windsor, in central Newfoundland, says he lost a friend to a collision with a moose on the Trans-Canada Highway last year.

"That nuisance moose was there two days. He should have been taken out of there. He wasn't. My friend was killed."

Nippard has been calling for action ever since.

He received support from more than 20,000 people who signed a petition calling for a moose cull last summer.

The government hasn't adopted the cull, and has so far rejected the group's idea of fencing off highways, saying that's too expensive.

But on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Department of Natural Resources said Minister Kathy Dunderdale will look at the group's hotline proposal.

Moose are native to Labrador but aren't native to the island of Newfoundland.

The animals were brought to Gander Bay in 1878 and then to Howley, western Newfoundland, in 1904.

Wildlife officials estimate there are more than 120,000 moose in the province.