Caribou records concentrate most heavily along the North Slope’s coastal plain and in Denali National Park’s open tundra and taiga edge, with a third cluster around Kobuk Valley National Park in the northwest and scattered reports from the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Alaska is essentially the whole US range for this species. Nowhere else in the country holds a resident population.
They’re built for a diet almost no other large mammal can live on: lichens dug from under the snow in winter, then sedges and fresh willow leaves across the open tundra in summer. Calving is timed tightly to the brief window when that forage becomes available, since newborn calves can’t yet outrun a chasing wolf or bear.
Records here rise sharply through the short arctic summer, peaking from June through September before falling off fast once the season turns. That drop tracks both harder terrain to survey in winter and where caribou concentrate on accessible ground, not a true absence once snow returns.
Full species profile
