Saturday, December 17, 2005

CBC News Indepth: Being Caribou

I just read Karsten Heuer's "Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bears' Trail", his fascinating account of a trek along the Continental Divide through Montana and Canada, where he champions the idea of creating wildlife corridors to join the National Parks and other public land to foster the survival of Grizzlies and Wolves and other large wildlife that need wider ranges. Now he and his wife have produced a documentary and a book on a unique trek along the path of the Caribou to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

CBC News Indepth: Being Caribou:

"Every April in Canada's Yukon Territory, one of the world's last great animal migrations occurs.

Driven by an instinct tens of thousands of years old, the Porcupine caribou herd turns north and west, and begins a long and dangerous trek to its calving grounds in Alaska.

Far to the south, politicians and oil executives are strategizing how to open those calving grounds to oil and gas development.

The caribou cannot argue their case.

So two Canadians decided they would become the caribou's voice. They decided they would follow the entire migration north and back. For five months, through bitter winter gales and a mosquito-infested summer, they would be caribou…an odyssey no one had ever even attempted. "

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