Caribou herds in North America seem to be declining.  Is warming climate or it’s effects on habitat to blame? The relationship of caribou to lichen-rich winter ranges and fire is often oversimplified.  Many factors besides habitat affect caribou numbers, which undergo large fluctuations naturally.  In this new Research Brief, we highlight recent publications on caribou-fire relationships and explore some of the factors that make it complicated to predict exactly what will happen and when if old-growth caribou habitats diminish with warming climate and more frequent burning.