Distribution & Population
The earliest known caribou or reindeer lived in Europe and North America about a million years ago. Today, reindeer are found in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Scotland, the Russia, China, and Mongolia. In the United States, reindeer live in Alaska, but also can be found as far south as Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, and Maine.
Today, the largest population of reindeer lives in Russia. About 800,000 wild reindeer are estimated to be there, not including the 2.5 million tame reindeer that do work for people! About one million caribou also live in Alaska, with about another million living in northern Canada.
Reindeer populations are expected to be smaller in the future. This is because people are moving in to the reindeers' natural habitat, giving them less room to move. Reindeer don't like to get within 2.5 miles (4 km) of things built by humans-such as cabins, roads, and dams. So as their "home zone" shrinks, the amount of food they have to eat is less, which makes reindeer not have as many babies. In Norway alone, the reindeer population there has dropped from 60,000 40 years ago to about half that today. This "reindeer shrink" could happen in other places, too, because of land development, including in the United States, Russia, and Canada.
Source: courtesy of http://reindeers.info/reindeer_articles/reindeer_distribution_and_population/, http://www.kidsnewsroom.org/newsissues/121903/index.asp?page=Music2
Image: courtesy of http://www.nps.gov/archive/lacl/scrapbook/caribou.htm
