Reindeer research in the Nordic countries

Reindeer husbandry is, for the Sámi people, a symbol of their culture and heritage, and also an important part of their economy. However, the practice is under severe pressure from other land-use, predators and recently from climate change. Concerns are being raised that the grounds used for reindeer herding may be lost in the near future.

Read more:

• Reindeer herding in Fennoscandia – same, same but different
• Research on reindeer husbandry – international cooperation
• Snapshots from Nordic reindeer research

 

Conditions for the reindeer herders differ somewhat between Finland, Sweden and Norway, but many conflicts and problems are comparable. It is therefore natural that researchers in the Fennoscandian countries cooperate to a large extent.

Research related to reindeer husbandry has been going on for several decades. Birgitta Åhman is Professor in reindeer husbandry at the Swedish University of Agricultural Research (SLU), and also president of the worldwide Arctic Ungulate Society. She points out three main challenges for the reindeer industry.

– First, there is the conflict between land use and land use rights, which is still far from being solved. The access to pasture land is a prerequisite for the survival of the reindeer culture. Second, loss to predators is a huge problem for the reindeer husbandry. Increasing populations of bear, wolverine, lynx, golden eagle and wolf lead to severely reduced incomes, which can only be partly recompensed by the government. Third, we have the consequences of climate change, which has made winter grazing a problem and also alters the whole ecosystem of the mountainous area. With more frequent ice barriers on lichen-rich grounds, reindeer cannot dig for the fodder, and herders are forced to give supplementary feed and even keep the reindeer in enclosures. This, in turn, creates new problems such as the spread of diseases, she says.

Birgitta Åhman, Professor in reindeer husbandry: “Loss to predators is a huge problem for reindeer husbandry”. Photo: Jens Frank.

– These challenges are the same across the whole area where reindeer herding is practiced, although the degree of each challenge may vary, she adds.

More about these challenges later, but first a short history.

 

Reindeer naturally occur across the whole northern part of the globe, in Europe, Asia and North America. The animal was an important prey for early settlers soon after the glacial retreat, and evidence of hunted reindeer can be found in rock-carvings that are several thousands of years old in e.g. northern Norway. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote in 98 AD about a group of people he called fenni, who hunted, dressed in animal skins and ate herbs. The first written evidence that reindeer were domesticated could have been when, in the 800s, the Norwegian farmer Ottar referred the Sámi and their managing of reindeer in herds to the English court, but there are theories that domestication started far earlier.

Reindeer herding developed in the 1500s-1700s to become the main business of the Sámi people. The herds are moved between summer and winter pastures, in some cases over large distances from the Scandian fells in the summer to the coast of Sweden in winter, or from the mountainous areas in Finnmark in winter to the Norwegian coast in summer. Some reindeer herding communities are more stationary, keeping the herds in the forested landscape.

Since the reindeer move freely most of the time with limited supervision, they are subject to predators, a problem in all of the countries. According to reindeerherding.org, predators are responsible for 80% of reindeer losses in Norway. Sametinget.se reports that 20,000-70,000 reindeer are killed every year in Sweden. Lynx and wolverine are responsible for the largest losses. In Finland, wolves and other predators are more common closer to the Russian border, but wolverine is the main predator on reindeer.

A threat which has increased in recent decades is global warming, with particularly accelerating temperatures in the Arctic. Warmer winters with frequent thaw and ice periods can make the snow so densely packed that the reindeer cannot dig for ground lichens. On the other hand, longer snow-free periods could be beneficial. However, climate change is considered a severe threat to the reindeer, and long-held knowledge of where to feed and rest is no longer reliable.

Forestry is, besides reindeer husbandry, the spatially most extensive activity in Sápmi. Harvesting old stands and site-preparation of the soil have severe negative impacts on access to lichen fodder, particularly during the bottleneck period in the winter. A lot of research has been conducted on the effects of forestry and processes to mitigate the conflicts. Currently, great effort is being made to find constructive solutions through dialogues between reindeer husbandry and forestry communities, but it is still a fact that the former extensive old forests are rapidly being replaced with younger and denser forests, with fewer lichens and with more disturbance of the original feeding places and migration routes.