Vanishing Caribou by Katie Orlinsky

This image was taken in Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, 2021.

A personal note from the photographer: For millennia Indigenous communities relied on caribou for sustenance, yet over the last 20 years Arctic caribou populations have been disappearing, going from a total of 5 million animals to roughly 2 million and falling over the last twenty years. There hasn't been a disappearance of so many large land mammals in such a short period of time since the American bison. It's an enormous loss that threatens to put even more pressure on the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic, as well as the indigenous communities across Alaska and Canada that have depended on caribou not only for food security, but also culturally and spiritually, for thousands of years.

These caribou were found migrating just outside the Indigenous Nunamiut community of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska in April of 2021. "Anaktuvuk" translates to "the place of many caribou droppings" in Inupiaq and is located along the traditional migration routes for the Western Arctic and Teshekpuk caribou herds in the heart of Alaska's Brooks Range (within the boundaries of what later became Gates of the Arctic National Park). 

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