Posted by Philip Burgess on April 28th, 2008
(Picture / story Russia Today 21042008)Reindeer breeding accounts for 90% of the agriculture in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District in northern Russia. The industry’s export markets include Germany, Italy, Greece and Latvia. But producers are facing logistics problems trying to expand.Reindeer have been the main source of income for the Nenets people for centuries. There are 600,000 head of the animals in the region.
But Russia has yet to develop the domestic market for reindeer meat. Today, all the produce is exported.
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Posted by Philip Burgess on April 28th, 2008
(Wolverine - Gulo Gulo) The number of reindeer killed by predators rose sharply last year. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry reimbursed reindeer herders more than two and a half million euros for lost livestock, the highest figure in 20 years.
The figure was one-fifth higher than the year before. Herders sought recompense for more than 4,000 lost reindeer. The ministry says the increase is partly due to growing predator populations.
However the amount of kills by wolverines also climbed steeply even though the number of these medium-sized predators has actually declined. There are only about 120 wolverines in the country, mostly in the north and east. The ministry is looking into why the number of wolverine kills has jumped. (Story/ Pic Source YLE News 21.04.2008)
Posted by Philip Burgess on April 24th, 2008
(ROSBALT NORD) САЛЕХАРД, 21 апреля. Освоение Бованенковского месторождения (Ямало-Ненецкий автономный округ) согласовано с коренным населением, сообщает ИА «Север-Пресс».
«Вторжение промышленности в зону хозяйствования коренного населения происходит крайне осторожно и цивилизованно, — заявил заместитель генерального директора компании «Газпром добыча Надым» Игорь Морозов. — Все решения по строительству инфраструктуры и трубопроводов в районе Бованенково принимаются только после детального обсуждения с коренным населением и прохождения соответствующих согласований и экспертиз в местных администрациях».
(Operator Gazprom has got the necessary consent from regional indigenous peoples for the development of the huge Bovanenkovskoe field in the Yamal Peninsula. English summary below) Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Philip Burgess on April 23rd, 2008
(Pic: Subhankar Banerjee, Vanity Fair) An interesting article has appeared in the May 2008 edition of Vanity Fair by Alex Shoumatoff. He writes about Chilangarov’s hugely popular (in Russia, not the rest of the world) stunt of planting a flag on the seabed of the North Pole,
“I don’t give a damn what all these foreign politicians … are saying about this. If someone doesn’t like this, let them go down themselves and try to put something there. Russia must win. Russia has what it takes to win. The Arctic has always been Russian.” (A. Chilangarov)
But of most interest to the Reindeer Blog is what he writes about reindeer husbandry and the challenges they face in Sakha Yakutia in the face of climate change - which in mainstream Russian scientific circles is not happening, a notion contradicted by Bob Corell (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment author, Heinz Center scientist and EALAT team member also quoted in the article). The mainstream view in Russia is that it is currently getting colder. The author visited several villages in Sakha Yakutia interviewing reindeer herders, horse breeders and wild reindeer hunters.
Read the full article here. / Download pdf here
Posted by Philip Burgess on April 22nd, 2008
According to a report in the Barents Observer and Rosbalt Nord, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug proposes to build a new port terminal in Indiga for exports of oil shipments. This is a region of reindeer husbandry for Nenets and Komi herders and it should be remembered that the establishment of an oil terminal in Varandei led to the relocation of an old Nenets village and created difficulties for reindeer herders in the region. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Philip Burgess on April 21st, 2008
The Local, Sweden Two Sami reindeer herders were narrowly missed by a falling space rocket launched from the Esrange space station in northern Sweden in the beginning of April. Saarivuoma Sami village has demanded that safety be improved.”It was lucky that the rocket did not fall on our heads. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here,” said one of the reindeer herders, Per Ola Blind, to news agency TT.
En raket från rymdbasen Esrange slog ned nära två renskötare i början av april.
– Tur att man inte fick raketen i huvudet, säger en av renskötarna. Nu kräver Saarivuoma sameby att säkerheten förbättras
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Posted by Philip Burgess on April 19th, 2008
A recent story from the ITAR-TASS newswire reminds one of the everyday dangers that reindeer herders face in Russia, and of course elsewhere, travelling as they do in remote and hazardous regions throughout the Arctic.
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, April 14 (Itar-Tass) - The body of one of five missing reindeer herders was found under snow debris in Kolyma’s Severo-Evensk district. The Ural truck that was carrying five reindeer herders that went missing in February was found under a five-meter layer of pressed snow on April 8. The first body was found under the truck. A tractor, a bulldozer and 15 rescuers keep clearing the snow debris to find the remaining four bodies.
The missing reindeer herders on February 25 set out in the Ural truck from their brigade’s camp along the 200-kilometre road to the Evensk settlement but never reached the destination. The reindeer herders had no communication equipment when they departed. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Philip Burgess on April 17th, 2008
(Picture - Miriam Elder, From the Moscow Times, 11042008) NARYAN-MAR, Nenets Autonomous District — When an airplane carrying LUKoil workers crashed in the far north of this Arctic region three years ago, killing 29 of 52 people on board, many blamed the weather.
When, one year later, in March 2006, a helicopter carrying victims’ relatives to a commemoration ceremony at the crash site also fell, killing another person, the indigenous people thought something else was at play. The land, they said, was cursed.
One of Russia’s newest oil-producing regions, the Nenets autonomous district is home to lucrative projects for LUKoil and Rosneft. It is also home to a population of 7,000 indigenous Nenets, whose livelihood and seminomadic way of life is being increasingly threatened by the region’s growing oil industry.
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Posted by Philip Burgess on April 17th, 2008
(From CBC North, 03042008) This historical photo from an Iqaluit museum shows Saami with a reindeer on Baffin Island in the 1920s. (Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum)
A Saami woman from northern Norway has followed the travels of her ancestors to Nunavut, looking for what happened to hundreds of reindeer that were relocated from Norway to Baffin Island in the early 1900s.
Karen Monika Paulsen, in Nunavut for a month-long research expedition, said her great-grandparents sailed with more than 600 reindeer to southern Baffin Island in 1921.
Using her family’s recollections and reports from the Hudson’s Bay Company, Paulsen has learned the company relocated the Norwegian reindeer as an experiment aimed at helping Inuit avoid starvation by teaching them how to herd reindeer. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Philip Burgess on April 15th, 2008
(From Arctic Sounder, by TAMAR BEN-YOSEF, April 11, 2008 at 11:19AM AKST The struggle by Alaska’s Inupiat to protect their culture in face of resource development has drawn the attention of indigenous leaders in Russia facing near-identical challenges.
A delegation of four Russian indigenous leaders from the Sakha Republic showed up in Barrow and Nuiqsut last week to meet tribal leaders, organizations and local residents to learn about Inupiat methods of protecting their culture. Read the rest of this entry »
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