A great video of caribou migrating. The channel says Alaska but I think that is BS. I saw this in Sept on Meta. It looks like Northern Quebec. I love how they stream over the hill down to the river. 20,000 years ago our ancestors would be very familiar with it.
A couple of very nice Newfoundland caribou above. I have been there a few times and never saw one that I remember. It is not hard in some spots as they come in right around towns, etc.
Around here they are long gone. My grandmother saw them in the late 1800s north of town but that would have been the last gasp. They are dependent on mature forests with lichen food supplies and that was rapidly disappearing with logging and fire. Similar stories are playing out in the west now with mountain caribou. Poaching was rife and it is a wonder any survived as long as they did. By the 1920’s, they were gone from the province. If that didn’t do it brainworm from deer and global warming would have by now. The only remnant woodland caribou south of the St Lawrence are trapped on a sky island in Gaspe. The Newfoundland ones are called woodland but their lineage is barren ground\quebec-labrador genetics. Valerius Geist, the big game researcher, was interested in the pelage on the Gaspe ones. I tried to find him data but I doubt it was conclusive. With the web nowadays, it would have been easy.
Like many lost bioregional species, I pine for never having seen them but they were always on the fringe here. They are very habitat sensitive and their resilience in the face of human pressure is not good.
There are several surviving place names that reference them here. Rivers, ponds, etc. There is a caribou pond near my land. It is just a tiny swamp puddle and I often wonder why it got the name. What was there to justify it? I hunted a deer that lived there many decades ago. I can’t remember when I last saw it. A logging road runs within 100 m now but I have no need to see it.
Hooved mammals that migrate may be at greater risk of extinction than those that stay put
A big hurdle for them.