By Ralph Jimenez, Globe Staff, 07/06/97

DIXVILLE NOTCH -- One day last weekend, at a salt lick along Route 26 just a mile or so from the Balsams Grand Resort, a moose counted 46 people. He just didn't tell anyone about it.

``Some of the moose have more contact with people than you would if you went hiking on most of the trails up here,'' said Judy Silverberg, a naturalist and coordinator of the state Fish and Game Department's Watchable Wildlife program.

Nationally, watching wildlife with no intention of hooking it or shooting it with anything but a camera is the nation's fastest-growing outdoor recreational pursuit, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In response, state and federal government agencies, in concert with conservation and sporting organizations, created the Watchable Wildlife program in 1990.

The sites, guides to which can be found on the World Wide Web and in a series of books coordinated by the Defenders of Wildlife, are identified by brown and white road signs whose symbol is a large pair of binoculars. New Hampshire has 90 sites in some stage of development, though not all are marked by signs, Silverberg said.

About 30 million Americans take trips every year specifically to observe wildlife. When they come to northern New Hampshire, what they most want to see is a moose.

To aid them in their quest the state recently opened its first official wildlife observation blind. It is a low tower that looks like a cross between a pioneer fort and a Japanese tea house. It stands just 20 feet from one of the area's busiest moose trails, putting viewers virtually mug to mug with moose, but in reasonable safety.

Safety is an issue. Nightly in summer, cars and crowds of people clog Route 3 in Pittsburg, along the stretch known as Moose Alley. And whenever a moose appears in a residential area, moose lovers often unintentionally harass the animal. Last month, a gaggle of camera-toting moose watchers chased a young calf so relentlessly that, despite its eventual rescue and care, it died of exhaustion.

``I have no end of horror stories about how people act at these salt licks,'' Silverberg said. ``When a moose is with a calf in one of these wallows, you don't go in there with them.''

A pickup truck passes, turns around, goes 100 yards, turns around, and flashes its headlights to signal an oncoming car. Although it is noon, a moose has approached the edge of a lick across the road, but it does not come closer.

Silverberg tells of a Vermont woman who felt driven to commune with a roadside moose. ``The woman was bragging. She said, `I got kicked a couple of times but I managed to pet it,' '' Silverberg said. It is only by dumb luck that no one in New Hampshire has been injured in a moose-watcher encounter.

All moose do not share the same temperament and all can be dangerous if threatened. An unhappy moose, Silverberg said, will flatten its ears, snort, roll its eyes and maybe even do a bit of a war dance before charging. But sometimes there is no warning.

``The reason we have two technicians here is so that if one happens to be trampled the other one may have a chance to go for help,'' Silverberg said. So far technicians Becky Perkins, a University of New Hampshire senior, and UNH graduates Martin Bean and Tina Casse have yet to suffer an unpleasant encounter with one of the 1,000-pound quadrupeds.

Their jobs also involve live-trapping small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians along nearby trails and making hikes twice daily along prescribed paths to note, mostly by identifying calls and songs, how many bird species are present. Their path passes close to the gnawed and bleached bones of a moose that Silverberg believes met an untimely death during a wind storm last summer. A large fir blew down striking the moose across the back. Tough limbs driven into the earth form a cage around the skeleton.

Not long past dawn last Monday morning, the north woods played an ancient but unfamiliar tune for Perkins and Bean.

``It was a huge growl and it was really, really loud,'' Perkins said. She and Bean did the prudent thing. They backed up slowly and let the big black bear have the berry patch to himself.

To help the moose survive their status as a tourist attraction, Silverberg is studying how wildlife is affected by human observers. Cameras tripped when a creature fox-sized or larger passes through infrared beam sensors automatically record the time, date, and identity of creatures using the trail or visiting nearby licks and wallows where road salt accumulates.

``We don't know, for example, what the energy loss is if the moose are in a steady state of alertness and what effect the stress has on them,'' said Silverberg, who hopes to learn whether moose vary their feeding times and locations and other habits as numbers of watchers increase.

``Are we really doing the right thing when we encourage people to watch moose and other wildlife for its educational value? That depends, I think, on distance. At 250 yards the answer may be yes, and at 200 yards it could be no. Herons in a rookery, for example, will abandon their nests and their young if people continue to come too close.''

Through interviews and extensive questionnaires, she and her team are also studying the effect viewing wildlife in various circumstances has on humans. Signs bearing natural history and safety information line the path leading to the tower. Visitors who agree are given a brief quiz to measure the depth of their natural history knowledge. Follow-up surveys then ask them to rank their viewing experience and quiz them again to see what they have learned.

The information gleaned is important for wildlife and for the state's economy. A study by the State of Illinois, an early participant in the Watchable Wildlife program, found that wildlife watchers added $479 million to that state's economy.

Steve Barba, a managing partner of the Balsams, was one of the first people to see the trend coming. In the only partnership of its kind in the state, Silverberg provides advice and educational materials to a full-time naturalist on the hotel's staff. The Balsams also provides room and board for Silverberg's researchers.

``I had to ask myself if this was the kind of education I wanted to be doing,'' hotel naturalist Kori Marchowsky said of her job at the resort. A former student of Silverberg's, the Nashua native initially felt more at home with the backpackers rather than those who can afford to vacation in luxury on the hotel's 15,000 acres.

``The people who come here, though, tend to be very influential in their fields and it's very important that they come to understand and appreciate wildlife and the natural world,'' Marchowsky said.

Barba is working with the state in an effort to advertise New Hampshire as a prime destination for wildlife lovers. He is also a leader in the effort to win for his region official designation as the Great North Woods.

``Our effort to create the Great North Woods fits in perfectly with what Fish and Game is doing,'' Barba said. ``Guests don't come to the Balsams Grand Resort primarily to commune with nature. But we are turning them on to what turned Emerson on -- the wonders of nature. People come here to renew themselves and recreate themselves, and that process is all the more fulfilling if they can connect with the natural environment,'' he said.

Moments later, Barba and Marchowsky grabbed stakes, signs, and a sledgehammer and climbed onto a golf cart. The signs, all vetted for accuracy by Silverberg, explained among other things the complex natural history of a golf course water hazard and how to tell if a moose is upset.

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