“There are two forms of nature. One is the nature you see every day. The other aspect of nature is something very distant, very remote. You don’t see it, but you know it’s there. It’s spiritual. It has to do with imagination, with soul. Without this kind of nature our daily life may not change, but something—soul—is missing.”
~Michio Hashimo, caribou watcher

Although they’re not the least bit aware of it, caribou have become the subject of a hot political debate that has been boiling over the past five years. It would seem these unobtrusive creatures of the remote arctic tundra and boreal forests of North America and Greenland would be far from the spotlight of national politics, but their future became uncertain when Washington announced plans to open the Alaska National Wilderness Reserve (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling. At almost twenty million acres, ANWR would seem big enough a place to accommodate the interests of bipeds and quadrupeds alike, but the narrow coastal plains, where fossil fuels are suspected to abound, happens to also be the center of biological activity for a quarter of the year. This valuable two thousand acre stretch is the calving grounds for two large caribou herds.