The recent visit by EALAT to Nadym was also covered in the local media on the Yamal Peninsula, who covered the event and interviewed Project Leader Dr. Svein Mathiesen. In other EALAT coverage, IGLO (International Action on Global Warming) a project of the US based Association of Science-Technology Centers, (ASTC) highlighted EALAT in their IGLO website.
Billionaire Roman Abramovich, Chelsea football club owner and Governer of Chukotka was in Rovaniemi, Finland yesterday visiting the Lapin Liha Company who showed him their products from reindeer meat. He has already purchased a reindeer slaughter house in Finland, which he has shipped to Chukotka, where one of the primary activities of the indigenous peoples there, is reindeer husbandry. He is also connected to a mega project that is under discussion in the region: the building of a tunnel under the Bering Strait, another version of the age old dream of connecting the continents. Meanwhile, 40 reindeer were killed in Hopseidet, Finnmark, with the construction of a road through their traditional migration route being the most likely cause.
EALAT Work Package 1 Meeting in Oslo today. EALAT Project leaders Ole Henrik Magga and Svein Mathiesen, ICR Director Anders Oskal and EALAT team members Inger Marie Gaup Eira are in Oslo today meeting with Inger Hanssen Bauer and Eirik Førland at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
ICR Director Anders Oskal was in Bardufoss this week making a presentation to the Crisis Response Group which comprises of people from the reindeer herding districts of Troms County and the Reindeer Husbandry Administration (Reindriftsforvaltningen) and the Food and Drug Administration (Mattilsynet). Topics covered included climate change and the ACIA report and added a circumpolar perspective. He also presented the EALAT project. In Tromsø, Oskal met with the folks at TV2 to discuss cooperation on outreach issues. Elna Sara was preparing for the visit of the Minister for Education of the Sakha Republic in the middle of May. Svein Mathiesen is currently in Alaska with ICR Board memeber Monica Sundset for a conference in Chicago and meetings in the University of Fairbanks with Gary Kofinas among others. Philip Burgess has spent the week creating the new look Reindeer Portal in online cooperation with the Arctic Portal folks in Iceland
ICR provides a lot of photographs regarding our work with the EALAT project, snow and snow change. GRID Arendal are preparing a report called Global Outlook for Ice and Snow and ICR provided images by Lars Miguel Utsi and Inger Marie Gaup Eira, both EALAT team members. We also provided images for GoNorth, a University of Lapland, Finland, publication. Inger Marie’s pictures were also used by NATURE magazine in their outline of IPY projects.
More than ten Norwegian State Secretaries are visiting Kautokeino today for a tour of the various institutions here, including ICR. Among the guests will be AID Department State Secretary Berit Oskal Eira. Anders Oskal made a short presentation about the work of ICR to the delegation as they passed through. Tomorrow they travel to Karasjok and visit the Sami Parliament.
Anders Oskal, World Reindeer Herders Assocation and Director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry made a brief presentation to the Senior Arctic Officials in Tromso today, as the SDWG gave a progress report to the SAO’s. All senior Arctic officials were present, including several new observers to the Council including China and Italy. In the morning, Anders Oskal took the opportunity to meet with State Secretary Liv Monica Bargem Stubholt to whom he presented an IP-IPY calender and a copy of Sophus Tromholdt’s book. In the afternoon, EALAT team member Dr. Monica Sundset gave Oskal, Burgess and WRH President Dmitry Khorolia a tour of the Arctic Institute for Arctic Biology at the University of Tromso.
The Arctic Council SDWG endorsed the EALAT project as an offical Arctic Council project today in Tromso. ICR Director Anders Oskal introduced the audience to the information and outreach portions of the EALAT project with a presentation. World Reindeer Herders President Dmitry Khorolia also made a follow up presentation accompanied by a short ICR film made from the recent EALAT workshop in Nadym. Positive comments about the project were made by Sweden, Norway and Canada. ICC and AAC also welcomed a project that was so clearly an initiative of indigenous peoples themselves.
ICR Director made a statement to the SDWG yesterday, thanking Sweden for their efforts in organising a workshop in Umea, emphasised the challenges faced by reindeer husbandry as a result of climate change and globalisation and proposed to the floor that WRH organise a follow up workshop with a more circumpolar emphasis. You can read the statement here [SDWG041107]. Other national states welcomed Sweden’s efforts, as did the Sami Council and Norway also offered to host a future workshop. The Chair deferred decision as to who would host the workshop.
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