In Alaska’s biggest city, a massive animal is rampaging through shopping centres. Here’s what’s going on

The moose is a charismatic animal that inhabits the circumpolar boreal, temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of the northern hemisphere. It is to be found contiguously from Alaska and Canada to Fennoscandia, the Baltic states and east into Russia.

My first sighting of a moose – the largest, tallest and heaviest of the world’s deer – was only a couple of years ago in Estonia. It is referred to as an elk in Europe, but I realised that moose and elk were indeed one and the same species.

Interestingly, there is also another ‘elk’ in North America, but it is the alternative name for the wapiti, a completely different deer species. The moose is the classic large animal of densely forested remote areas, with the largest population densities in Canada and Alaska.

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