The woodland caribou is the largest of the caribou subspecies and is darker in color than the barren-ground caribou. specialist on large North American mammals, described the "true" woodland caribou as ”the uniformly dark, small-manned type with the frontally emphasized, flat-beamed antlers" which is "scattered thinly along the southern rim of North American caribou distribution.” Geist asserts that ”the true woodland caribou is very rare, in very great difficulties and requires the most urgent of attention”, but suggests that this urgency is compromised by the inclusion of the Newfoundland caribou, the Labrador caribou, and the western Osborn’s caribou in the Rangifer tarandus caribou subspecies. In Geist’s opinion, the inclusion of these additional populations obscures the precarious position of the “true” woodland caribou.
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