Moose hunt touted as highway safety program

A man leading a campaign to reduce moose-vehicle accidents says he'll dog the provincial officials until they see things his way.

'If you reduce the number of moose, you are going to reduce the number of accidents.' —Eugene Nippard

Eugene Nippard, of Grand-Falls Windsor, leads a group called the Save Our People Action Committee, which is calling on the province to allow hunters to kill more moose — which he calls "landmines" on the roads.

"Someone got to do something and this committee is hopefully going to do it," said Nippard. "If you reduce the number of moose, you are going to reduce the number of accidents."

More than 700 moose-vehicle collisions happen in Newfoundland and Labrador every year. By September, four people died after their cars hit moose on the province's highways in 2009. Accidents are reported year-round but more than 70 per cent of them occur between May and October. 

Nippard is circulating a petition around the province calling for a larger hunt to reduce the moose populations near highways. By September, more than 12,000 people had signed it.

The province should cut back more brush from the sides of roads, he said, and consider building fences along the highways.

On Tuesday Nippard's committee met with the deputy minister of natural resources for more than an hour.

"Our next meeting is going to be with the minister of works, services, and if we don't achieve anything from these meetings we're going to have town hall meetings," said Nippard. "We got the public behind us. If that don't work, we're going to go from the town hall meetings to Confederation Building."

Nippard was in a car that hit a moose six years ago. He and two other people in the car were hospitalized.

"I got scars to take to my grave and my niece was injured also," he said. "Thank God, none of us was killed but it gave us a bad fright."

Nippard believes government officials now understand that his group is determined to find solutions to the problem. The committee is scheduled to meet with government officials again this fall.

Moose are native to Labrador but they aren't native to the island of Newfoundland. Moose were brought to Gander Bay in 1878 and then to Howley in 1904. Provincial wildlife officials estimate there are more than 120,000 moose in the province.