Credit: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/
Some more food for thought
The winter of 1963-1964 was supposed to be extremely harsh and the heavy snow-pack didn’t allow the reindeer to reach the lichen which caused them to starve and freeze. Nevertheless the reindeer wouldn’t have had to scrounge for food if they weren’t so many in numbers. I also wonder if there was one infertile male left due to inbreeding since 6,000 reindeer were created from an original count of 29.
If you found this intriguing, a more human example is Easter Island: Read this adaption of Easter’s End (a book originally written by Jared Diamond)
Some may think this story is incomparable to humans since we are ingenious and brilliant at converting usable resources unlike caribou but please remember that the human population is growing rapidly and our resources are not infinite. We have to respect what we have on this Earth and not pretend that we can live in permanent abundance.
Relevant Wikipedia articles:
- Sustainability
- St. Matthew Island
- Aleutians (the hardcore indigenous people of Alaska’s Aleutian islands)
- Lichen
- Caribou