Researchers in southwestern Alaska are closely monitoring the Mulchatna caribou herd using advanced technology to determine whether disease or nutrition is behind the herd’s failure to recover. The study comes amid efforts to understand a dramatic population decline that has led to a subsistence hunting closure.

A total of 94 brown bears, five black bears and five wolves were killed in the program that began May 10 and ended June 4, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said this week. That’s more than four times the number biologists predicted would be taken. State biologists also say disease and changing food supplies might be a bigger factor overall.

Midnight on Dec. 31 brings the close of 2019 and also the close of the hunting season for Mulchatna Caribou on federal lands. The federal season,

The Mulchatna herd was not at the peak numbers it once had decades ago. Over-hunting, migration changes and wolf predation could be leading causes of decline in herd.

A respiratory pathogen once thought to only affect sheep and goats has been found in Alaska caribou and moose. The bacterium, called mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, or "Movi," has also been implicated in the death of an emaciated caribou from the Fortymile herd last month.

Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae ("Movi") is a respiratory bacterium that can cause disease in susceptible hosts. Previously thought to be host-restricted to sheep and goat species, scientists have identified Movi for the first time in healthy moose and caribou in Alaska; a bison in Montana; mule deer in New Mexico, and diseased white-tailed deer from the upper Midwest.