​Montana forestry workers kill, blow up orphaned moose reported by Good Samaritan

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Montana’s Josh Hohm thought he had done a little baby moose a favor by reporting it to state wildlife officials after discovering it nearby its dead mother, but what he couldn’t anticipate was how the young animal would be “taken care of.”

Instead of finding it food or addressing any potential illness, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park (FWP) officials ended up killing the moose and blowing its carcass up with explosives – right alongside its deceased mother and another dead calf.

The whole grizzly episode began on Monday, when Hohm took a camping trip out to Montana’s West Boulder Campground, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported. He happened to come across a baby moose while there, and though the animal was friendly, Hohm knew that its mother would likely be nearby, and it probably wouldn’t appreciate it hanging around humans.

Instead of discovering an angry cow moose, however, Hohm found the mother close by, lying dead next to another calf that had been stillborn.

That’s when he called state wildlife officials, believing they would discover a new home for the lonely mammal.

A Montana man saved a baby moose. But then his act of kindness blew up, big time http://t.co/QKBI7MHWc6

— Gregory Harris (@GregoryHarrisII) June 4, 2015

These hopes were short-lived, as wildlife officials shot the baby moose soon after Hohm left for home, according to the Washington Post.

“It’s just unbelievable to me that that’s how things are handled,” Hohm said to the Daily Chronicle after finding out what happened. “It just sounds incredibly wrong.”

Afterwards, officials placed the dead moose near its mother and the stillborn calf before blowing all three of them to smithereens. This was done partly in order to keep grizzly bears from showing up at a popular campsite to feast on the bodies.

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“These guys are on our payroll to oversee the protection and well-being of these animals and this is how we ‘manage wildlife?’ It’s quite disheartening.” Hohm said to local KXLH News.

While Hohm and others may be shocked, the Montana FWP stands by its behavior, saying trying to find another home for the moose was out of the question, and that the agency acted to prevent disease from spreading.

“We don’t move or rehabilitate moose,” FWP spokesperson Andrea Jones said to the Daily Chronicle.

“I feel for people who obviously have good intentions,” she added. “On the flip side of things, we also want to protect humans and animals when it comes to the spreading of disease.”

Jones said that while bears or birds of prey may be taken in and rehabilitated, moose, elk and deer are a different story due to their disease-carrying potential. The mother of this baby moose was also infested with worms, she told KXLH.

“They can carry chronic wasting disease which can be very devastating to populations; it’s also very dangerous to humans,” Jones said. She also said that without its mother, the baby moose would have starved.

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