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Snow and Spring Green-Up Predicted When Moose Visits Peaked at Roadside Mineral Licks

A moose stepping across a road in Alaska
Conservation · Management

A 12-year camera-trap study in north-central British Columbia, Canada found that snowpack and spring green-up best explained when moose (Alces alces) visits peaked at roadside mineral licks from year to year. The result could help road-safety planners time measures for periods when moose are especially likely to be close to traffic.

Roadside mineral licks form where de-icing salts wash from roads and accumulate in ditches or low-lying pools. Moose are attracted to these sites to supplement their mineral intake, bringing them into places where encounters with vehicles can become dangerous.

Beatrice Penco and colleagues used camera traps at four roadside mineral licks over 12 years. They compared several possible explanations for annual changes in the timing of spring and summer peaks in lick use. Snowpack and spring green-up—the seasonal return of actively growing vegetation—accounted for this variation better than the competing factors examined in the study. In other words, the busiest period at the licks did not fall on the same calendar dates every year.

The study tracked moose visits rather than actual vehicle collisions, so it does not show that snow or green-up directly changed collision numbers. Its practical value is in identifying when moose activity near known roadside licks is likely to peak. The authors argue that this information can support site- and season-specific measures to reduce collision risk.

Sources and image credit

  1. Penco, B., Rea, R. V., Johnson, C. J., Hesse, G., & Apollonio, M. (2026). Predicting moose (Alces alces) activity at roadside mineral licks: Implications for moose-vehicle collisions. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 160, 105552.Primary open-access research article, indexed as published online in August 2026; ScienceDirect assigns it to volume 160 (November 2026). Camera traps at four roadside mineral licks over 12 years showed that snowpack and spring green-up best accounted for annual variation in the timing of spring and summer peaks in moose lick use.

Image: Moose (Alces alces) crossing a road in Alaska, USA, July 2002. Photo: John J. Mosesso / National Biological Information Infrastructure. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Representative road-crossing image; not an animal or site from the British Columbia study. · Public domain · Source

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