Caribou are vanishing at an alarming rate. Is it too late to save them?

[UngulateNerd92]

After more than a million years on Earth, the caribou is under threat of global extinction. The precipitous decline of the once mighty herds is a tragedy that is hard to watch — and even harder to reverse.

Caribou make do. They use as little as possible, often what nobody else wants. They perfected this impulse over tens of thousands of years, chasing north after retreating ice sheets while most other hooved animals stayed further south, or spreading themselves thinly across scraps of land in forests and valleys and on mountaintops.

Caribou are vanishing at an alarming rate. Is it too late to save them?

 

[Kifaru Bwana]

After more than a million years on Earth, the caribou is under threat of global extinction. The precipitous decline of the once mighty herds is a tragedy that is hard to watch — and even harder to reverse.

Caribou make do. They use as little as possible, often what nobody else wants. They perfected this impulse over tens of thousands of years, chasing north after retreating ice sheets while most other hooved animals stayed further south, or spreading themselves thinly across scraps of land in forests and valleys and on mountaintops.

Caribou are vanishing at an alarming rate. Is it too late to save them?

Very few zoo's Statewise hold them right? Very peculiar....
Same up north they are conservation dependents

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Very few zoo's Statewise hold them right? Very peculiar....
Same up north they are conservation dependents

Wild forms of Rangifer tarandus are not common in US zoos, especially in the continental United States. San Diego Zoo does still keep Siberian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus sibiricus) and the New York State Zoo still might keep Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). If memory serves me right, Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Eatonville, Washington still keeps Woodland caribou as well as another caribou subspecies. Keeping two subspecies of Rangifer tarandus simultaneously is certainly remarkable! In the past more obscure subspecies were kept including Peary caribou (Rangifer tarandus pearyi) at Lincoln Children's Zoo in Nebraska and animals listed as Newfoundland caribou (Rangifer tarandus terrenovae) were kept at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC, the latter of which are now synonymous with ssp. caribou. It is my firm belief that every wild animal and plant species, subspecies, and distinct population segment needs to have a captive insurance population when and where possible.