Are moose loose in the isolated wilds of Fiordland?

More than 100 years ago, a ship dropped anchor in the frigid fjords of New Zealand’s South Island and released 10 nervous moose on to the shore. The crew watched as the animals - the last survivors of a long voyage from Saskatchewan, Canada - skittered out of their crates and up into the dense, lonely rainforest.

- By Eva Corlett WELLINGTON

The moose had arrived on a flight of fancy, as part of the then premier’s grand vision to turn Fiordland national park into a hunters' paradise. It was the second attempt to release moose into the region - in a country whose only native land-based mammals are bats - after nearly all of an earlier herd died crossing the seas. Red deer and wapiti, or elk, were also released around the same time for game-hunting.

Over the next few years, moose sightings were reported and photographs of their hulking frames lying dead next to hunters occasionally graced the pages of local newspapers. The last confirmed sighting was in 1951, after which they were pronounced extinct.

Yet in the decades since, there have been clues that the animals remain in New Zealand. People have found footprints too large to be deer, branches up to 2.5 metres high broken and stripped of leaves, fur snagged in trees and cast antlers. There have also been numerous unconfirmed sightings of moose.