Wildlife sightings appear to be on the rise in the region.
With this week’s rare sighting of a moose on Parlee Beach, and a bear near Mapleton Park last month, some are wondering why.
Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick Joe Nocera says we’re staying home more, especially over the past few months during the COVID-19 pandemic and that is creating less disturbance.
“Our pace of life has also slowed down, so we tend to be looking more than we might have been when we were otherwise busy or had our nose in our phones. It’s hard to know if it is a combination of the animals showing up because people aren’t there or if we are just more attentive,” Nocera says.
But he adds, if you do witness a rare sighting of wildlife, you should just leave it alone, “If you can take a picture from afar or do so without getting closer to the animal, that’s fine, but don’t get too close, especially if it’s a bear cub, because that bear cub is probably not alone. The closer you get to the cub, the more upset mom is going to get.”
Sightings have been reported across the province, but Nocera says this phenomenon isn’t just local to New Brunswick, “There have been worldwide reports of wildlife showing up in places where they traditionally have never been, such as deer wandering the streets of Dublin, and flocks of wild sheep coming into town.”
In the tragic death of the moose at Parlee Beach, Nocera couldn’t give a definitive answer as to why it might have been there, “The case of the moose in Parlee beach was an interesting one, but without an autopsy and knowing whether that moose was suffering from disease, it could potentially be explained that for several months the beach had been near empty, due to COVID-19. Then all of a sudden, that moose who had been in that area for awhile where no one was, encountered a beach where there were thousands of people.”
Nocera expects as our lives get back to normal, the rate of seeing wildlife in stranger places will go back to the way it used to be.
