“Oh my god!”

The exclamation comes from the Program Coordinator at CPAWS Northern Alberta in our downtown Edmonton office.

“Did you know that there are caribou on the quarter!?” she asks, incredulous that she has only just realized this small detail about our 25-cent coin as she works to fact-check herself by investigating her change.

“Duh!” I exclaim, the on-site caribou expert, and suddenly every staff member is turning their pockets inside out to inspect their pocket change and Google searches abound (unearthing this 80’s educational video gem).

This is when it dawns on me that of all the conversations we have about caribou in our office (which are a lot), we somehow skipped all the fun parts and stopped learning about all their goofy quirks. For instance, did you know that female caribou grow antlers just like male caribou—they’re the only deer species that do this! Or, that their ankles click when they walk? In the Arctic, their migrations must sound like an orchestra of castanets!

Woodland caribou are an inspiring species that have captivated our hearts since we were young; growing up to stories of reindeer flying in the night skies (psst…reindeer = caribou!). It was only when I was older that I realized we had these charming critters throughout Canada, in almost every province and territory. Caribou evolved in our boreal forest where they have carefully adapted to hide from predators and other animals that attract predators. This strategy has served caribou very well… until recently. Decades of industrial development have disrupted the boreal forest and made it increasingly difficult for the caribou to stay out of reach of predators, resulting in population declines. Now, caribou have very few safe places left in the wild.

These days, when we hear about caribou in the news we often hear of management failures and staggering declines. Progress towards recovery has always been challenging—the province has gone through many iterations of plans for caribou recovery since the species was identified as Endangered by Alberta in 1986 – each without success in stemming the decline. But, here at CPAWS, we believe that with immediate action there is still hope for these animals.

Caribou recovery depends first-and-foremost on the protection and conservation of caribou habitat. Hard work towards this goal is ongoing across our province—but because progress is taken in small steps, it is not often that we hear the good news. To help with that, I’ve collected some feel-good projects that are working toward caribou recovery right now, that might not be familiar with: