Elk NetworkLower 48 Caribou ‘Functionally Extinct’

General | April 21, 2018

It’s just a matter of time until there will be no more caribou in the continental United States. And that could be pretty quickly. The latest survey conducted from the sky above the Selkirk Mountains of north Idaho turned up only three caribou—all females.

“We are all in mourning,” Bart George, Kalispell Tribe of Idaho biologist, told Outdoor Life. “We are shaking our heads, trying to figure out what to do next. There is a chance we missed some animals in the surveys, but even so it’s pretty grim.”

This ever-shrinking caribou herd goes back and forth across the U.S.-Canada border. Things are not a whole lot better in the Great White North. According to Outdoor Life, there are only 1,500 southern caribou left in British Columbia and numbers are shrinking there too.

Scientists say it comes down to poor habitat.

Read more here.

(Photo source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)