Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with a Caribou Herd

A true story written like fiction, very easy to read. Lots of information about caribou and their habitat, but not at all in a textbook or preachy way. The landscape descriptions are good, but obviously cannot do the story justice. I really enjoyed reading about their trek, finding and following and losing (rinse, repeat) caribou. There is an excellent sense of ecology and of a world that is bigger than humans. It reminds me of what is out there, what we have lost, what we could protect.

Superbly described and planned adventure to highlight Alaska/US plan to rampage through the 10-02 lands aka ANWR, where the "Porcupine" [River] caribou herd, which is an international herd, births most years. Authors dodge grizzlies, fight hunger (errors in plane drops) and cold and exhaustion as they attempt the equal the caribou's rapid pace in deep snow. A bold follow-up to his previous book, which was a walk from Yellowstone to the Yukon.

The joke was on me! After seeing this title on a "Recommended Reading" list, I mail-ordered it, only to wind up with the children's book, rather than the adult version. Forty-eight pages of nice photos with a text that didn't say much more than, "Caribou are impressive creatures. It was challenging to follow them." Whether this stands up well as a children's book, I don't feel qualified to judge.

One thing the book did prompt me to do was to watch the "Being Caribou" documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada (available on the NFB Web site to watch for free). I enjoyed that.

I imagine there's even more in the adult version of the book which I'll have to read someday.

Author Karsten Heuer and his wife followed a migrating herd of caribou for five months in order to record their story and persuade people not to destroy their calving ground to dig for oil. They had to survive on their own, trekking after the caribou on foot, as the caribou made their way to the calving ground, had babies, and moved onward. The photos are amazing and it's an important story to tell, but I found the book overall to be rather slight. It appears that there might be a version of this book for adult readers and I'd be interested to see what the differences are.

Personal memoirs of trekking along the path of the Pinecone Caribou Herd (120,000+) as they move to spring calving grounds along the Arctic Ocean coast, as they have done for thousands of years. Done as research to support reasons for not allowing US oil exploration at the same coastal refuge area. Not just watching from airplanes, but trying to discover what "being caribou" means as much as possible. Up close and personal with caribou, grizzlies, wolves and river crossings. Makes you appreciate central heating and plumbing, even as you wonder what might happen to our society if/when we tap out our current energy sources.

this was a very enjoyable book about a wildlife biologist and his wife tracking a caribou herd on their way to their calving grounds and back. heuer definitely gets a different perspective of the fight over the arctic national wildlife refuge when he's there with the caribou. he sees its importance to them as something that can't be underestimated.
this is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the anwr issue, as well as anyone interested in wildlife biology.

Beautifully written book, beautiful photography on the lives of the caribou. This book illustrates and explains the difficult lives of caribou and all they have to go through to survive.