Reindeer
Rangifer tarandus
Seen by the oracleIts power
It can see ultraviolet light. In the snow, it spots lichen and wolf tracks where we see only white.
Estimated wild population
About 2.9 million in the wild
Trend
Declining (40% since the 1990s for some subspecies)
Range
Scandinavia / Siberia / Greenland / Canada / Alaska
Main threat
Climate change (melting ice, changing pastures), hunting, more predators
Meet it
It really exists. It is waiting for you at the Parc Animalier d’Auvergne.
The reindeer (called caribou in North America) is the deer of the great cold, adapted to life in the harshest Arctic and subarctic places on the planet. It is the only deer in which both females and males grow antlers, and it makes the longest land migrations in the animal kingdom, travelling more than 5,000 km a year. It can reach speeds of 80 km/h. Its wide, hollow hooves work like snowshoes on snow and like paddles in water. There are about 2.9 million wild reindeer in the world, but several subspecies are declining sharply because climate change is upsetting the plant cycles they depend on.
What the Park does
Protected areas in Scandinavia, Russia and Canada, telemetry tracking, international cooperation