Atlas der Säugetiere Nordrhein-Westfalens

Elch

10 entries

Elk

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Alces alces

With a shoulder height of up to 2.3 meters and a weight of up to 800 kg the Moose is the largest cervid species living today.
The western distributional limit of the Moose runs from NW to SE between the Oder and Weichsel Rivers. Further west as a rule only individual migrant Moose have become known. The assumption that in earlier centuries the Moose was also permanently present west of the closed area cannot be proven.
With certainty, the species occurred here in the Pleistocene. In Landois and Rade (1883) three records are given:

• In the Hagenbach near Nottuln
• In a peat deposit between Nordwalde and Greven
• Peat bog Unland near Rheine
• Aside from these documented pieces we list a finding from the Lippe and Alme Rivers.

We can find a detailed report about a preliminary last recent Moose from North Rhine-Westphalia in Herkenrath (1884). This migrant Moose stayed in NRW from the middle of September 1972 until 14 September 1973. It died due to a car collision.

Author

Heinz-Otto Rehage

Citation

Rehage H-O (2023): Elch (Alces alces).In: AG Säugetierkunde NRW — Online-Atlas of the mammals of North Rhine-Westphalia. Downloaded from saeugeratlas-nrw.lwl.org on 2023/03/27