Spatio-temporal trends in crop damage inform recent climate-mediated expansion of a large boreal herbivore into an agro-ecosystem

Large-scale climatic fluctuations have caused species range shifts. Moose (Alces alces) have expanded their range southward into agricultural areas previously not considered moose habitat. We found that moose expansion into agro-ecosystems is mediated by broad-scale climatic factors and access to high-quality forage (i.e., crops). We used crop damage records to quantify moose presence across the Canadian Prairies. We regressed latitude of crop damage against North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and crop area to test the hypotheses that NAO-mediated wetland recharge and occurrence of more nutritious crop types would result in more frequent occurrences of crop damage by moose at southerly latitudes. We examined local-scale land use by generating a habitat selection model to test our hypothesis that moose selected for areas of high crop cover in agro-ecosystems. We found that crop damage by moose occurred farther south during dry winters and in years with greater coverage of oilseeds. The results of our analyses support our hypothesis that moose movement into cropland is mediated by high-protein crops, but not by thermoregulatory habitat at the scale examined. We conclude that broad-scale climate combined with changing land-use regimes are causal factors in species’ range shifts and are important considerations when studying changing animal distributions.