YELLOWKNIFE — Once, caribou wandered over the Arctic tundra in herds that took days to pass.

So great were their numbers - even 20 years ago - that they were able to shake off man's puny imprint on the great barren lands like so many flies on a rump.


"There was so much caribou all over that even our plane, our scheduled flights, couldn't land on the airstrip," recalled Alfonz Nitsiza of Wha Ti, a tiny aboriginal community northwest of Yellowknife.

"The caribou were on the airstrip. It was full of caribou, all our communities were."

Today, scientists fear caribou are the new cod.

Once a gigantic bloom of life that sustained entire societies, the cod fishery was closed in 1992 after a near-total collapse of fish stocks. The subsequent bust of Newfoundland's outport culture was nearly as complete.

Recent surveys on two major caribou herds in Canada's North suggest the same thing may be happening there. And as scientists begin to unlock the secrets of that decline, aboriginals who still depend on the great herds to feed both body and soul are rethinking old assumptions.

...Concern has been building for years. But this summer, survey results carried a distinct whiff of impending catastrophe.