Species Profile: The Muskox 

Following up on my recent wood bison article, I would like to discuss Canada's other rewilding export, muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus). Muskoxen are a large, cattle-sized herbivore related to sheep and goats. They are noted for their ability to survive in extremely cold weather, due to their very soft, very warm, very commercially valuable, coat of thick wool. It is this wool, as well as their meat, that led to their almost being hunted to extinction. By the twentieth century, the only remaining populations were found in northeastern North America, in areas of the Canadian Nunavut territory and in small populations in Greenland, with the American Alaska, the Canadian Yukon territory, and the Canadian northwest territory populations having been wiped out not long before that.  

Muskoxen are an important part of their ecosystems. They are a prey species for bears and wolves. They also eat vegetation not eaten by reindeer, allowing the two to easily coexist. In ancient times they were often found alongside elk, moose, reindeer, bison, horses, kiang, saiga, sheep, and of course, wooly mammoths. They are a very important part of restoring the arctic tundra to the huge, fertile grassland it once was. 

Despite being an exclusively North American species in recent times, the muskox was once a circumpolar species, also being found across Eurasia, from Scandinavia to Siberia. The last Scandinavian populations died approximately nine thousand years ago in Sweden, while the last Siberian population died out about two thousand years ago in the Taymyr peninsula. Both events are likely attributed to overhunting by humans. 

Luckily, populations survived in Canada and Greenland, largely due to extreme isolation. We, the Canadians have recognized their importance and committed ourselves to expand their populations to their former range, not just in our own country, but in Alaska and Eurasia as well. These include populations set up in Sweden and Norway in the nineteen forties and fifties, which were then used in the seventies to establish populations in areas of Russia such as the Taymyr peninsula, Wrangel island, and more recently, Yakutia. Populations have also been attempted on the islands of Svalbard and Iceland, but were unsuccessful. 

I for one, think this is a great conservation step. I would hope that other areas are being considered for muskox reintroduction, such as Baffin island, Finland, Denmark, across Russia and its islands, and possibly even Scotland or the Baltic nations. I also would like to see the Iceland and Svalbard introductions revisited. It is worth noting that there is an introduced population in northern Quebec, in which they have not previously been present, but to which they probably would have migrated eventually. With further proliferation of muskoxen in both the Nearctic and Holarctic, probably more individuals should be brought to Eurasia from Canada or Greenland (possibly a good use for the Quebec population?) to increase genetic diversity, seeing as all old world individuals are descended from the Scandinavian introductions.

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