According to a recent study of caribou populations the animal’s numbers have decreased worldwide by a whopping 60 percent in the past three decades.  Scientists are calling it a “dramatic revelation”.

Co-authored by University of Alberta biologists Mark Boyce and Liv Vors, the study  published in Global Change Biology,  also explains that the reason that the majority of the dozens of different herds of caribou throughout Canada, regardless of the subspecies, are experiencing major decline is both climate change and also human influences as we impede on their habitat.

The two scientists got in contact with other caribou researchers and also poured over any published literature and government databases that may have contain information about the caribou population.  The data they compiled was on 58 major herds in the Northern Hemisphere.

Vows described the caribou as “one of the last symbols of wild Canada” to Canwest News Service yesterday, saying, “The future seems very bleak for the species if things don’t change.”

While there have been previous studies that have looked at caribou populations, this is the first study that is using population research obtained worldwide.  

Vors said that human migration might not have been possible without the caribou, which provided food, clothing and tools for indigenous people living in the north.   Caribou are “the cultural and socioeconomic cornerstone of northern peoples throughout the circumpolar north and, through herding and hunting, permitted these cultures to survive in a harsh and unpredictable environment.”

Yet the study states that caribou don’t seem to receive the same attention as other threatened and declining Arctic animals, such as the polar bear.

“While global attention focuses on the increasing effects of climate change in polar regions, caribou and reindeer have not received the international attention of other northern fauna, such as polar bears.”