"It’s hard not to feel haunted by the caribou.
"They used to be everywhere along the coast of Lake Superior. Even as their numbers have dropped over the last century, they’ve remained regular characters in living memory. People tell tales of running into one along a forested trail, a few galloping across a highway, a hungry horde gulping down a picnic’s worth of food, breaking into an unattended cooler and scarfing an entire box of chocolate chip cookies. Some remember watching caribou flock to salt licks in their yards the way others might watch birds at a feeder.
"But a lot has changed in the last decade."
"They used to be everywhere along the coast of Lake Superior. Even as their numbers have dropped over the last century, they’ve remained regular characters in living memory. People tell tales of running into one along a forested trail, a few galloping across a highway, a hungry horde gulping down a picnic’s worth of food, breaking into an unattended cooler and scarfing an entire box of chocolate chip cookies. Some remember watching caribou flock to salt licks in their yards the way others might watch birds at a feeder.
"But a lot has changed in the last decade."
The lonely Lake Superior caribou and a lesson in limits | Great Lakes Now
Ontario’s southernmost herd illustrates how hard it is to bring a species back from the brink — and why we need to recognize tipping points before we reach them.
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