Consider reindeer. I am trying to be seasonal but, if you are not someone who celebrates Christmas, worry not; this blog is really about animals. Read on.
The caribou, as we call the species in North America, is found across the northern hemisphere. In northern Eurasia, it is widely domesticated as the “reindeer,” and that is where the species originated, being one of many species of large mammal that expanded its range, during the Ice Age, from Eurasia to what is now North America, across the “Bering land bridge.” Seas were lower then and there was dry land connecting what is now Siberia to what is now Alaska. Humans made the same trek for sure, although there is speculation that they also arrived in the western hemisphere via sea routes, long ere the Vikings made it to what is now Canada’s east coast, a couple of thousand years ago. After human arrival, many large animals – the “ice age megafauna” – went extinct.
At one time, vast herds of caribou roamed northern Canada. They were “managed” as individual herds. None of those herds have increased in recent years, and some have gone down in numbers by over 90 percent.
Canadian caribou occur as three distinct forms, called subspecies. There is the Peary caribou, found in the islands of the high arctic, and the smallest of Canadian caribou. It has undergone precipitous decline and was listed as endangered in 2004, with just a few hundred of them left. To the east, another distinct form of caribou, found in Greenland, became extinct before the full extent of its range was known. And, still another form, restricted to islands off the coast of British Columbia, is also extinct.
That leaves a northern form, usually called the Barren Ground caribou, which lives on open tundra, and the more southern geographic variation, usually called the woodland caribou. Both are in trouble and some herds on the verge of disappearing. In the case of the woodland caribou, deforestation and clear cutting by the timber industry, which produces products that serve us all, has been seen as a major cause of the decline. But, I would suggest that forestry is part of a greater suite of causations that are encapsulated under the rubric, “encroachment.” Add to that the negative effects of climate change, at a time when some of the people best positioned to fight climate change prefer to deny its existence, and things are not looking good for the caribou.
But then, they are not looking good for at least half of the world’s vertebrate species, or for the invertebrate species and microorganisms that form the foundation of the food chains we all depend on, or the plants that are essential to the survival of us all. What to do? All that we can do is rededicate ourselves, as New Year’s resolution number one, to fight for science-based government policy to protect the beleaguered environment, and to educate ourselves. It just might work.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
