Vanishing Caribou

• Prize
  Silver in Editorial/Environmental
• Photographer
  Katie Orlinsky
• Agency / Studio
  National Geographic
• Technical Info
  All Images Are Digital Made With Either The Canon Mark Iv, Canon R5, Or Fuji Gfx100s
• Photo Date
  2021-2023

Over the last twenty years, Arctic caribou populations have been in shocking decline, going from a total of 5 million animals to roughly 2 million and falling. There hasn’t been a disappearance of so many large land mammals in such a short period of time since the American bison. It’s a staggering loss, threatening to not only unravel delicate Arctic ecosystems already besieged by climate change, but the food security and cultural practices of indigenous communities across the Arctic.

Photographer Katie Orlinsky has spent the last fifteen years covering news stories and feature assignments around the world for publications like National Geographic, The New York Times and The New Yorker. For the last nine years the majority of her work has focused on documenting the how climate crisis is changing and challenging communities across the Arctic. Katie received a BA in Political Science from Colorado College and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University. She has taught photojournalism as a visiting professor at NYU and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.