I’m sitting in the cab of a large pick-up whose roof bristles with radio antennae, on a narrow back road in the western, more wooded part of Massachusetts. On the seat between Dave Wattles and me is a radio the size of an automobile battery with knobs and dials on top. It’s emitting a low static hum punctuated by loud chirps. The chirps are from the GPS transponder on a radio-collared moose, in this case the Peru bull, one of Wattles’s 20 or so research subjects. The louder and closer together the chirps, the closer we are to the moose. It’s April, and Wattles is doing his monthly moose check-up.
Peru shouldn’t be here, nor should any of the other moose chirping through Wattles’s device. Moose (Alces alces), according to the most recent research, can’t do well in climates as warm as ...