Reindeer Blog

ICR Director Anders Oskal is in Tromso today attending the 2nd Statoil Impact Assessment on behalf of the centre. Other participants include AquaNIVA and Norut NIBR.

The programme for the 12th International Arctic Ungulate Conference (AUC) has been announced and can be viewed here. The ICR and EALAT team will be in attendence.

ICR employee Philip Burgess is going to be in Iceland this week, as he gets trained in Akureyri by the skilled folks at Teikn i Lofti. The Arctic Council PAME ‘Breaking the Ice’ conference is also in Akureyri on March 27, 28 and Philip will be assisting in the webcast of that conference. Akureyri is also the home to the PAME Secretariat.

According to a report in today’s Moscow Times, Total have been ‘found guilty of violations’ in their Oil operations in Yamal. Reports of environmental violations can be a precursor to ejection (as in Sakhalin). Norsk Hydro are a 40% partner in the same project - might they be next in the cross hairs?

ICR attended the ‘Future Challenges for Reindeer Husbandry’ workshop in Umeå, 20-21 March, organised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. EALÁT project leaders Dr. Ole Henrik Magga and Dr. Svein Mathiesen were in attendence with Magga presenting the EALÁT project and the importance of traditional knowledge in general. EALÁT researcher Dr. Bruce Forbes was also a speaker. ICR Director Anders Oskal was there and several ministeries were represented including Swedish Ambassador for Foreign Affairs Helena Ødmark and Stein Paul Rosernberg of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Other ministeries represented included the Norwegian Ministry for Labour and Social Inclusion and the Norwegian Food and Agriculture Department. Several research bodies were present including the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry among others. Sámi political bodies were represented by the Sámi Council.  Future directions for reindeer related research was a primary topic of discussion, with the importance of traditional knowledge being emphasised by ICR, WRH and EALÁT.

Russian state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom plans to pay for its stake in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project soon. They signed a deal in December 2006 to pay $7.45bn for the controlling stake in the Royal Dutch/Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi owned Sakhalin-2 project. Sakhalin-2, with oil reserves of 150m tonnes and gas reserves of 500bn cubic meters, was the only one of six blocks in which a Russian company was not participating and also the only project to already be producing oil and gas. The Russian authorities’ frequent environmental probes into the project have been seen as aimed at helping Gazprom to muscle in on the project. Foreign investors have seen their stakes halved leaving Royal Dutch/Shell with 27.5%, Mitsui with 12.5% and Mitsubishi with 10%. The project includes an 800km pipeline through reindeer herding pastures.

On Sunday, March 19th, ICR hosted a small delegation from Finland that included EALAT researchers Florian Stammler and Bruce Forbes. Accompanying them was Nenets Sergey Khudi, a former herder who now works for a construction company in Labytnangi. Khudi is interested in establishing dialogue with adminstrators, researchers, herders and development personnel in Finland and Norway. ICR organised a short presentation by Aslak Anders Sara, a reindeer herder from Kautokeino who had clear insights into the unforeseen consequences of the Statoil Snøhvit development on their summer pastures, which he shared with the meeting.  This was a fact finding meeting for Khudi, in advance of a major delegation from Yamal that will be visiting Finland and Norway in May. ICR agreed to facilitate contacts for the upcoming delegation. Statoil’s presentation in Hammerfest regarding indigenous peoples, reindeer and pastures differed in a stark dramatic way to the presentation of Sara the day before..

An extremely well attended seminar on the issue of reindeer grazing areas in Norway was held in Alta today. Hosted by NRL/NBR, Reindriftforvaltningen and EALAT outreach, over 140 herders, researchers, administrators and students packed the hall. Facilitated by EALAT researcher Inger Marie Eira Gaup, EALAT project leader Svein Mathiesen was amongst the presenters, which was opened by State Secretary for Sami affairs, Berit Oskal. ICR employee Philip Burgess webcast the day to the Arctic Portal, where it has been archived. ICR employee Elna Sara was also there.

EALÁT researcher Ellen Inga Turi will be joining Nenets reindeer herding “Brigade 8” on their three week spring migration from the town of Yarodei to Yar-Salei on the Yamal
Peninsula: This represents an unprecedented opportunity for Turi and the EALÁT team as Turi continues her work in comparing the adaptive capacities of Sámi and Nenets reindeer husbandry. Read the press release EALAT joins Spring migration

YEP is a pipeline, which runs from the Yamal peninsula in Russia’s Arctic to Frankfurt on Oder on the Polish-German border. It will carry Russian gas for over 4,000 km (2,485 miles). The whole pipeline, expected to be completed by 2010, was estimated to cost about $10 billion and will have a capacity to carry 67 billion cubic metres (2,370 billion cubic feet) of gas a year through two stretches.