“What would your life be like without water?” Absurd question? To the Gwich’in people of Alaska and Canada, says NPR correspondent Elizabeth Arnold, it’s just as impossible to imagine life without caribou. Yet development threatens the herd on which the Gwich’in depend.

“I knew all about the politics of this story,” says NPR correspondent Elizabeth Arnold, who has covered Arctic environmental issues for years. But spending time with the Gwich’in people and watching the migration of the caribou meant a fresh look at a familiar story: “It is rare these days to find a group of people who are dependent on a single animal.”

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