Steve Beale, age 9, of Pittsfield, Mass., for his question:

HOW BIG IS A CARIBOU?

Caribou is the French Canadian name for the wild reindeer of North America. A male is called a bull and measures from six to eight feet in length and stands about four to five feet tall. The bull will weigh from 250 to 700 pounds.

The female caribou is called a cow. She is smaller than a bull.

The barren ground caribou spends his summer in the Arctic tundra and his winters in the evergreen forests south of the tundra. In summer he eats mostly grass and leaves of willow, dwarf birch and other shrubs. In winter he lives mostly on lichens.

Woodland caribou are slightly larger and darker than the barren ground caribou. They are found in forested regions from Newfoundland to the Northwest Territories and down through British Columbia, northern Idaho and northeastern Washington.

The number of caribou has declined from more than 2 million in the early 1900s to only about 1 million today.