VANISHING ACT
OONE OF CANADA’S ICONIC land mammals is quickly disappearing, and it seems many of us don’t realize — or don’t care. During the last century, millions of caribou roamed across the country. Today, there are about a million, the species having declined by a dramatic 40 per cent over the last 25 years. And while most of us have never seen a caribou in the wild, we’ve essentially got virtual ringside seats to a species extinction.
I highlighted the plight of Canada’s caribou populations briefly in this space in our January/february 2019 issue in connection with a phenomenal map cartographer Chris Brackley created to compare the species’ historic population highs with its then current lows. It was an impactful snapshot of how dire the situation is. See the caribou map at cangeo.ca/so21/caribou.
The circumstances haven’t improved much since. But perhaps there’s hope. One of the country's largest herds, the Porcupine caribou (barren-ground caribou that range between Yukon and Alaska), has seen record population numbers in recent years — as high as 235,000. The herd’s previous peak population was about 178,000 in 1989.
Photographer Peter Mather documented the herd in and around Alaska’s National Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and we tapped contributing editor Alanna Mitchell to explore the species’ alarming decline overall, while briefly considering if there are lessons to tease out from the Porcupine caribou's success (see “An empty landscape,” page 34).
Let’s hope our armchair caribou view can turn into a great comeback story.
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