Caribou

The state's largest caribou herd shrank 20% -- or 113,000 -- from 2003 to 2007, according the latest count by the state Department of Fish and Game. The decline of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd came after years of steady growth. The reasons are not clear, said Jim Dau, the lead state biologist on the herd since 1988, but warm spells in recent winters may have played a role.

That's quite a caffeine high: Between Peet's Coffee & Tea and now Caribou Coffee Co., German conglomerate Joh. A. Benckiser will pay more than $1.3 billion this year for joe. On Monday, Benckiser said it will shell out $340 million for Minneapolis-based Caribou. In July, Benckiser  said  it would spend $974 million to buy Emeryville, Calif.-based Peet's. The German giant also controls makeup maker Coty and luxury goods company Labelux, which owns shoe brand Jimmy Choo. To acquire Caribou, an affiliate of Benckiser will pay $16 a share, a 30% premium to Caribou's closing price Friday of $12.32 a share.

"Epic" is a word that gets tossed around a lot in the world of pop culture, and usually means something more than three hours long that strives to be considered Important. In the dance community, however, epic has come to mean any set that runs past 4 a.m. and features an abundance of rhythmic joy.  DJ Dan Snaith (a.k.a. Caribou ) recently released a record of hard dancefloor tracks under the guise of Daphni. His intention was to celebrate the amped-up, club-ready sound of the early and mid-'90s, when beat music was turning into EDM and 3 a.m. could sound eternal.

"Epic" is a word that gets tossed around a lot in the world of pop culture, and usually means something more than three hours long that strives to be considered Important. In the dance community, however, epic has come to mean any set that runs past 4 a.m. and features an abundance of rhythmic joy.  DJ Dan Snaith (a.k.a. Caribou ) recently released a record of hard dancefloor tracks under the guise of Daphni. His intention was to celebrate the amped-up, club-ready sound of the early and mid-'90s, when beat music was turning into EDM and 3 a.m. could sound eternal.

Hunters from Arctic villages that depend heavily on caribou for food are the main suspects in the slaughter of dozens of animals that were left to rot on the tundra, state wildlife officials said. More than 60 unharvested caribou carcasses were discovered this month along a 40-mile trail network outside the Inupiat Eskimo villages of Point Hope and Kivalina. Troopers said local hunters on all-terrain vehicles shot the caribou between July 4 and 8 as a herd of thousands migrated through.

On a small bluff overlooking the Jago River near here, it smells as if someone sprinkled oil on the wildflowers. Geologist Michael Bradshaw, carrying a small pick, strides through the Arctic poppies and down the bluff to show why. The pick easily passes through the crumbly surface of the bluff and breaks off gooey chunks of clay, which turns out to be the source of the unlikely aroma.

The troubles faced by the fish and birds in Alaska's Prince William Sound because of the March 24 oil spill have intensified a debate on the future of about 180,000 caribou that wander the tundra about 800 miles to the north. That is where the oil industry wants to extend its search for oil--and where environmentalists have planted a stake in the ground. Both sides say that the issue has been catapulted to the top of the environmental agenda in Congress by the recent oil disaster.

Setting the stage for a contentious debate on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, government scientists have concluded that oil wells limited to the northwest corner of the refuge would do little or no harm to the thousands of caribou who bear their young on the coastal plain. In a follow-up of an earlier report, the U.S.

Joe Titlichi was standing on the banks of the Porcupine River when he saw the caribou calf, so young its umbilical cord still trailed down from its belly, try to follow its mother across. As the cow picked its way through the swirling waters, the calf tried desperately to swim behind. "By the time it got across, it was half on the shore, half in the water, and it was just laying there, shivering," said Titlichi, head of the board that monitors caribou movements in the vast eastern Arctic.

Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it's not just here. Across the tundra 1,000 miles to the east, Canada's Beverly herd, numbering more than 200,000 a decade ago, can barely be found today. A continent away, in Siberia, the biggest aggregation of these migratory animals, dun-colored herds whose sweep across the Arctic's white canvas is one of nature's matchless wonders, has shrunk by hundreds of thousands in a few short years.

Dan Snaith is best known under his pseudonym Caribou, where he makes deeply emotional, smartly crafted electronic music. A master programmer and instrumentalist, Snaith has continued to expand his sound since his early work as Manitoba, crafting luscious tunes that reveal a curious mind at work. A few years ago, however, Snaith started to get nostalgic for the early sounds of techno and house culture, and harnessed that energy through a project called Daphni. He'd been frustrated with the new breed of pop-friendly EDM, and wondered whether the genre's success had ruined the music.

Woodland caribou herds in Canada are declining, and tar sands development is a big part of the reason why. But Canada's national and provincial governments know what do about that: Kill the wolves. That's the crux of new posts by both Grist and the National Wildlife Federation , which are following this issue. Both are revisiting the environmental costs of tar sands development in Alberta. The federation cites numerous studies released in 2011 that found that oil and gas development in Canada is contributing to the decline of woodland caribou herds.

Caribou Island A Novel David Vann Harper: 296 pp., $25.99 "Caribou Island" is disturbing, as dark as it is moving, powerful far beyond the dimensions of many debut novels. The book focuses tightly on a small group of characters. If you've read the stories in David Vann's "Legend of a Suicide" or his "A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea," you may recognize some of them. And as in his previous books, Vann ranges over the landscape of his childhood: the cold rain forest of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, the ocean, fishing vessels, storms, narcissism, suicide.

A federal judge in Alaska refused on Monday to allow state officials to launch an aerial wolf hunt on a federal wildlife refuge in the Aleutian Islands, an emergency effort to save a herd of caribou that is on the verge of collapse. The ruling is the latest chapter in a legal battle between the state and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that erupted after federal wildlife officials threatened to charge state game hunters with trespassing if they entered the refuge and began gunning down wolves.

Sometimes a transcendently spectacular piece of theater can sound ridiculous and childish when you try to put it into words. "Under Polaris" follows a female scientist who takes a seed containing the human genome to the North Pole, where she cavorts with a polar bear, musk ox and caribou to the sounds of experimental rock. If the description is laughable, "Under Polaris" isn't. This multimedia, pseudo-rock opera (which runs at REDCAT through Sunday) contains a wealth of originality.

Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it's not just here. Across the tundra 1,000 miles to the east, Canada's Beverly herd, numbering more than 200,000 a decade ago, can barely be found today. A continent away, in Siberia, the biggest aggregation of these migratory animals, dun-colored herds whose sweep across the Arctic's white canvas is one of nature's matchless wonders, has shrunk by hundreds of thousands in a few short years.

Here at the foot of the Brooks Range, a week's trek north of the Arctic Circle, slabs of caribou meat as big as your shoulder hang over a smoky campfire. Skinned and roasted caribou heads pile up for serving at dinner like so many lumpy footballs. Caribou antlers stand as festive sculptures. A band of 250 Gwich'in Indians move about in ceremonial caribou-hide clothing against the chill of impending autumn. "Caribou," the Gwich'in say, in a solemn explanation of the obvious, "is our life."

A federal judge in Alaska refused on Monday to allow state officials to launch an aerial wolf hunt on a federal wildlife refuge in the Aleutian Islands, an emergency effort to save a herd of caribou that is on the verge of collapse. The ruling is the latest chapter in a legal battle between the state and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that erupted after federal wildlife officials threatened to charge state game hunters with trespassing if they entered the refuge and began gunning down wolves.

Hunters from Arctic villages that depend heavily on caribou for food are the main suspects in the slaughter of dozens of animals that were left to rot on the tundra, state wildlife officials said. More than 60 unharvested caribou carcasses were discovered this month along a 40-mile trail network outside the Inupiat Eskimo villages of Point Hope and Kivalina. Troopers said local hunters on all-terrain vehicles shot the caribou between July 4 and 8 as a herd of thousands migrated through.

The state's largest caribou herd shrank 20% -- or 113,000 -- from 2003 to 2007, according the latest count by the state Department of Fish and Game. The decline of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd came after years of steady growth. The reasons are not clear, said Jim Dau, the lead state biologist on the herd since 1988, but warm spells in recent winters may have played a role.