Tag: biologist

A biologist goes to Ungava to better understand the caribou
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A biologist goes to Ungava to better understand the caribou

Witness to the catastrophic decline of migratory caribou in the Far North, an eminent Quebec biologist will collect DNA from 30 caribou from the George River to better understand the species. When Steeve Côté went for the first time to the shores of Ungava Bay, in 1992, it was during a summer job. There were 800,000 caribou in that herd at the time. "There were so many at the top of the ridges that the mountain was moving," he says. With such a population of ungulates, one of the largest in the world at the time, the concern was not for the survival of the species, but for the devastation caused to the scanty vegetation of the tundra. However, the numbers have shrunk by 99% since then, and the population is close to extinction, which worries biologists. ...