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Woodland Caribou
Rangifer tarandus caribou
58.5866, -124.764
Field Notes
Description:
These northern woodland-dwelling deer tend to be larger then their barren ground compatriots. Adult bulls average 350-400 pounds (159-182 kg), but may be much larger. Females average about half this size. Both genders have antlers, but the bulls have the much larger antlers.
Habitat:
Once woodland caribou populations spread across the northern boreal forests of North America, but their southern range edge retreated north with logging and over-hunting. While range maps show them across a wide swath of northern Canada, many populations are now local and distances between populations may be increasing. They are dependent on old-growth mature boreal forest.
Notes:
I photographed this bull in British Columbia's Stone Mountain Provincial Park, which is a great place to see them. There is a small population on the Slate Islands Provincial Park located on a number of islands in Lake Superior, a population I'd like to photograph someday. There has also been some plans made to reintroduce them into Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, but a massive blowdown of old growth forest there probably has put that plan on hold. In addition, whitetail deer are becoming more common in the BWCAW and they carry parasitic brainworms that don't seem to bother the whitetails very much, but have significant effects on caribou.
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