Government not doing enough to mitigate moose accidents: Opposition

Roland Butler, MHA for the District of Port de Grave and Liberal Opposition Critic for Environment and Conservation, says government needs to step up soon with a comprehensive action plan to deal with nuisance moose on or near our highways to protect the lives and safety of people.    

Today in the House of Assembly, the MHA questioned government on the failure to deal effectively with the ongoing moose accidents that have generated a provincial outcry and concern. There are an estimated 120,000-150,000 moose in the province and some 700 people are involved in moose-vehicle accidents each year in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“These moose-vehicle collisions not only endanger people’s lives and compromise their health, they constitute a major health care problem for the province, yet government has taken no substantive action to address this issue,” says Butler.  “While government has increased moose licenses by 2,154, a majority of these licenses were dormant licenses, so the actual increase was small.”

Butler believes a multi-prong approach to the problem needs to be launched including further increasing the hunt quota, erecting wildlife fences in high accident-prone areas, carrying out more extensive brush cutting and looking at other alternative options such as establishing a 1-800 phone line to report moose so they can be removed.  “There are solutions to this problem, but government has not been determined enough to truly tackle this issue. Public awareness of how speed and night factors increase the risks of an accident can only go so far in safeguarding against these types of accidents.

“Government has a responsibility to ensure the highways are safe to travel on, day and night, and I am not convinced they have gone far enough in fulfilling their mandate. With an average of two accidents per day, this is an epidemic; and with 30,000 more calves being born annually, this problem will only get worse. Instead of stalling, government needs to offer up an effective program and strict timelines to reassure people and commuters that their lives are top priority for this government.”

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