This 10-day exchange will bring leaders working on indigenous issues and a traditional way of life from Alaska’s Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope to the Sakha Republic to meet with Evenk tribal and NGO leaders and officials in several Sakha villages. The Evenk community in Sakha, a traditional reindeer-herding culture, is working to protect its culture and way of life in the face of increasing resource extraction activities and industrial development. Through the exchange, indigenous leaders will convene to share experiences and to learn from each other. Participants will discuss their communities’ approach to protecting sacred traditional lands, participation in decision-making processes regarding natural resource use, and community leaders’ experience negotiating with resource extraction companies and monitoring industrial projects.

This will be the third in a series of exchanges between the Sakha Evenk community and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. The first exchange, in 2008, brought Evenk leaders from the Sakha Republic to Barrow for information-sharing and a cultural exchange that resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding, under which the communities agreed to mutual support for efforts to protect indigenous peoples’ rights and preserve traditional lands in the face of industrial development.

The relationship initiated here was strengthened in March 2010, when Evenk leaders from Sakha and Russian geological experts visited Barrow for cultural presentations and to share the effects of hydrocarbon extraction on the indigenous reindeer economy. This third exchange will provide further opportunity for both communities to deepen knowledge of the each other’s culture and community challenges, and to identify ways to support each other’s efforts.

Indigenous communities on both sides of the Arctic, including Alaska’s North Slope and Russia’s Sakhalin Island, have for decades watched their pristine homelands and traditional fishing and hunting grounds be sacrificed to oilfield development.

Traditional Arctic communities are often the first to experience the effects of global climate change, and stories abound from both sides of the Pacific about environmental conditions changing in response to warming trends, such as the melting of Siberian permafrost or the recent appearance of new insect species in Alaska. Such rapid change necessitates strong community organization and cooperation among indigenous groups to protect their lands and traditional ways of life from the impacts of global warming and resource extraction projects.

“Our goal is to continue to help foster the longstanding relationships between native Russian and Alaska tribal communities that can eventually be developed into an influential information-sharing and advocacy network,” said Shawna Larson, Alaska Program Co-Director for Pacific Environment. “We see this as an opportunity for both groups to gain a better understanding of the impacts of oil and gas projects on indigenous life in the Arctic and how to collectively best approach this.”

Members of the delegation will be available for interviews upon returning from the exchange, during the week of March 21, 2011. For more information contact Colleen Keane at ckeane@pacificenvironment.org or (907) 277-1029.

For more information visit www.pacificenvironment.org/russia and www.pacificenvironment.org/alaska for more information.

Sarah Palin is hard to miss these days, positioning herself perhaps for a run at the 2012 US Presidential elections. Here she pays homage to that essential attribute for potential US politicians, being able to use a gun (though she missed over 5 times!), taking down a caribou.

Source: The Daily Caller

FAIRBANKS (AP) — For most hungry Alaskans, reindeer meat doesn’t represent much more than a spicy sausage link.

University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers want to know if there’s more potential for the state’s roughly 18,000 reindeer. A new market study is under way to see whether local consumers are interested in high-end cuts of reindeer, and to determine what they’re willing to pay for them.

Greg Finstad, the manager of UAF’s Reindeer Research Program, hopes to see a day when customers eagerly throw a petite reindeer steak on the grill.

“We’re trying to establish the connection — the business relationship between the retailer and consumer,” Finstad said.

UAF researchers began providing Home Grown Market with sides of reindeer last week to gauge demand for the product. The small Geraghty Avenue grocery, which specializes in locally grown foods, is offering reindeer steaks and ground meat.

The market study is expected to last for the next year. Throughout the process, Home Grown Market has agreed to open its books so UAF can determine the specific cost of selling the meat.

The reindeer isn’t cheap — steaks are selling for $25 per pound — but they offer a local product that’s been virtually impossible to find in the past.

Alaska’s reindeer has almost all gone toward sausage, and even the choice cuts went into the grinder. Because of that, reindeer herders on the Seward Peninsula have little concept of the worth of a good reindeer steak.

“They’re raising these reindeer, but they have no idea what their market value is,” Finstad said.

Home Grown Market owner Jeff Johnson said sales have been modest in the first week, although they’ve grown each day. Even so, Johnson said his reasons for participating in the market study aren’t purely financial.

“In my opinion, it’s not about making money — it’s about helping an entire industry,” Johnson said. “If we can get an entire industry going, all of us are going to benefit.”

Finstad said the Reindeer Research Program isn’t in a position to supply a large grocery store with meat, and that at this point it doesn’t want to.

He’s counting on a small store owner like Johnson to help provide customers with guidance on how to cook reindeer, which is an important step in promoting the meat.

“We need to educate the consumer,” he said. “You can’t do that with a large, impersonal grocery chain.”

Both Finstad and Johnson rave about the flavor of reindeer, but say preparation is key. Finstad said people often cook reindeer like they would beef, which almost always ends with disappointing results.

Johnson compared reindeer to lamb, with a rich, delicate flavor. He said a medium-rare preparation, with some grilled onions and minimal seasonings, seems to highlight it best.

Reindeer also is more affordable than it would initially appear, he said, since servings are petite steaks of 4 ounces or less.

“You’re buying this because it’s a unique flavor,” Johnson said. “It’s going to complement a good wine and some local veggies. It’s not a big piece of meat to be the main attraction.”

Finstad said reindeer is more nutritious than alternatives like beef, with high protein and low fat and cholesterol. He said it’s among the most tender meats available, and has a flavor that’s rich without tasting gamy.

The study requires a long-term commitment, Finstad said. He expects some customers will initially buy reindeer simply because it’s a novelty, but said it’s important to know if they’ll come back for more.

If the market study is a success, Finstad said the Reindeer Research Program wants to shift the supply chain to Seward Peninsula herders. He said there are no long-term plans for UAF to become a commercial supplier of reindeer meat.

“We want to work ourselves out of a job,” Finstad said.
Source – By Jeff Richardson Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

The calf appeared at 3 p.m. on April 22, as University of Alaska Fairbanks Reindeer Research Program herdsman Rob Aikman worked nearby. He noticed the calf’s mother, a 2 1/2-year-old named Lightning, was having difficulty and went to assist. As he tugged on the calf, he noticed its heart was beating but that the calf was not breathing. After Aikman performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the calf was fine.

In September, seven females were artificially inseminated with frozen semen shipped from Canada. Once in Fairbanks, it was thawed and a veterinarian performed the necessary technique. Six pregnancies did not take.

“This is a first and it’s a small step,” said Milan Shipka, an animal scientist at the UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, which runs the Reindeer Research Program. “We will work to get the bugs out so it will become a tool for reindeer producers.”

He said the procedure allows reindeer owners to move genetics over great distances without having to move live animals. The Reindeer Research Program is dedicated to the study of reindeer: researching meat science, range management and animal health. The applied science is then shared with reindeer producers.

“We are absolutely excited,” said Shipka, who is also a livestock specialist with UAF Cooperative Extension Service. “Janice Rowell and I have been taking steps to get here and we really appreciate the assistance of the Reindeer Research Program. This is just the beginning.”

(SitNews) – Thursday’s birth of a 10-pound male reindeer calf at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm made worldwide agricultural history: It marks the culmination of the first documented successful pregnancy of a reindeer by artificial insemination using frozen-and-thawed semen.

Lightning, a female reindeer at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm, rests with her newborn calf on Thursday, April 22 at the farm on the UAF campus. Photo by PJ Soden

The calf appeared at 3 p.m. on April 22, as University of Alaska Fairbanks Reindeer Research Program herdsman Rob Aikman worked nearby. He noticed the calf’s mother, a 2 1/2-year-old named Lightning, was having difficulty and went to assist. As he tugged on the calf, he noticed its heart was beating but that the calf was not breathing. After Aikman performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the calf was fine.

In September, seven females were artificially inseminated with frozen semen shipped from Canada. Once in Fairbanks, it was thawed and a veterinarian performed the necessary technique. Six pregnancies did not take.

“This is a first and it’s a small step,” said Milan Shipka, an animal scientist at the UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, which runs the Reindeer Research Program. “We will work to get the bugs out so it will become a tool for reindeer producers.”

He said the procedure allows reindeer owners to move genetics over great distances without having to move live animals. The Reindeer Research Program is dedicated to the study of reindeer: researching meat science, range management and animal health. The applied science is then shared with reindeer producers.

“We are absolutely excited,” said Shipka, who is also a livestock specialist with UAF Cooperative Extension Service. “Janice Rowell and I have been taking steps to get here and we really appreciate the assistance of the Reindeer Research Program. This is just the beginning.”

On a remote island in the Bering Strait during World War II, a tiny band of Americans ran a radar station. Twenty-nine reindeer were placed on St. Matthew Island with them, to be eaten in case of emergency.

The emergency never came, and population biologist Dave Klein counted 6,000 reindeer on the island by 1963, spread out over just 50 square miles of land. Then, sailors started to report seeing bleached reindeer skeletons dotting the island. When Klein returned in 1966, there were only 42 left and no males with the ability to reproduce. The herd dwindled and eventually went extinct.

There this strange mystery sat for decades until extreme weather specialist John Walsh of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and University of Nebraska climatologist Martha Shulski teamed up with the now 80-year-old Klein to solve it. They announced their findings this week here at the American Geophysical Union meeting.

It turns out that a series of winter cyclones comparable in intensity to a Category 2 hurricane buffeted the island in early 1964. Overpopulated and isolated as the island was, the reindeer herd proved vulnerable to the extreme storms, which brought much heavier than normal snowfall, stronger winds, and lower temperatures.

The question that remains is why these extra-strong storms occurred. For reasons that still aren’t understood, a series of weather systems sweeping across the Pacific from Japan intensified just east of the dateline and then headed north.

Over that winter, the closest weather station to reindeer’s home, St. Paul Island, got more than six and a half feet more snow than normal. The barometric pressure differential between the low of the strongest storm and the regional high in Siberia was the highest in the 60-year period for which measurements are available. The reindeer were no match.

Source: WIRED

Vladimir Etylin, Sarah Palin, and a dead caribou...

While much has been made of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s lack of international experience (especially after a poor performance in an interview with CBS’s Katie Couric), it should be noted that what experience she does have, has a reindeer herding connection…

One of the few politicians she actually has met from Russia (Putin’s rearing head notwithstanding), is former Vice Governor of Chukotka, the renowned Vladimir Etylin. Not only was Etylin born into a reindeer herding family on the tundra in Chukotka, he is a trained scientist, politician, and lifetime advocate for the Chukchi people. He is also on the board of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry (ICR), the publishers of this blog! Mr. Etylin is currently in the field in Chukotka. When he returns to phone contact we will endeavour to follow this story up! The picture above shows Vladimir Etylin presenting earlier this year at the EALAT Information seminar in Anadyr, Chukotka pointing out the best known dead caribou for many years, lying beside Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

According to the Seattle Times, Etylin invited Governor Palin to Chukotka (in 2007), an offer she has yet to take him up on,

“She seemed very modern and forward-thinking and was open to the idea,”
Yetylin said in a telephone interview. “Absolutely, I think she should
come.” (Seattle Times)

Watch this space….

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.

The trip, which took place March 22-April 3, was sponsored by the Russia and Alaska programs of Pacific Environment, an environmental organization based in San Francisco with an office in Alaska.

The Russian visitors intended to learn how community organizing in Alaska is used as a tool to gain leverage when dealing with resource extraction companies and government bodies.

In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved an East Siberian Pacific Pipeline to cut right through the southern part of the republic, also called Yakutia, on its way to deliver oil to Japan, China and the United States.

Originally, the 2,600-mile pipeline was planned to skirt within a half-mile of the northern shore of Lake Baikal – a UNESCO World Heritage site, thanks to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, many of which cannot be found elsewhere in the world.

Protests against the pipeline’s proximity to the lake and the risks involved finally pushed the route farther north and into a different region.

The Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, is the largest region in Russia, spanning about half the size of the Lower 48.

It is also one of the most remote of Russia’s regions and one of its richest in natural resources, with oil, mining, coal production, diamonds and timber.

Heavy resource extraction has already taken its toll on the vast land, populated primarily by indigenous people – the Yakut – and Russians.

“Before the coal industry, we had 12,000 domesticated reindeer in one herd, now we only have 4,500,” said Ivan Atlasov, an industrial engineer and president since 2005 of the Association of the Evenk people.

“The reindeer changed their patterns to move away from the mines and went further towards the mountains,” he said.

Reliant on the animals for food and clothes, the herders in this remote and extremely cold region were forced to travel with the herd by air, subjected to rising oil costs.

In addition to coal mining and the pipeline, a railroad is under construction, and plans are made for an open-pit coal mine in the southern region of Sakha.

The territory for the future pipeline section is entirely above permafrost and is home to the Evenk, an indigenous people who rely mainly on subsistence hunting of reindeer.

An ancient proverb says that wherever there are reindeer, there is an Evenk.

A more contemporary variation adds that wherever there is an Evenk there are reindeer, according to Yuri Yukhnovets, an Evenk teacher and union leader from Southern Sakha and mayor of his village.

This may be true right now, but the delegation and the people they represent back home are afraid the government is ignoring the facts that may change this situation forever.

“There are virtually no functional rights that exist for the Russian indigenous people,” said Meerim Kylychbekova, of Pacific Environment’s Russia Program.

Transneft, the company behind the East Siberian Pacific pipeline, is a government-owned monopoly.

“This is a massive project that should require lots of months of work,” said Ekaterina Evseeva, co-director of Eyge, a leading indigenous environmental organization in Sakha.

“The pipeline is more than 1,400 kilometers long in the Sakha region, and they only did a few months of environmental assessments,” Evseeva said.

Other claims, similar to those made by groups in Alaska against offshore drilling plans, accuse the Russian equivalent to the U.S.’s Minerals Management Service of approving a plan lacked information and had no alternative.

A coalition of scientists, conservation organizations, indigenous groups and concerned locals has appealed the decision in court, stating the agency knew the project was incomplete.

The coalition stated the agency used information from the 1970s and ignored its comments on negative impacts of constructing and maintaining the pipeline in that region.

It added that public hearings were not held in all the relevant regions and were kept quiet, causing attendance to be low.

“The government wants to build the pipeline as fast as possible while oil prices are high,” Evseeva said.

The pipeline would handle an estimated 40 million cubic meters of oil a year in its first years of operation. The second phase estimates 90 million cubic meters a year, according to Evseeva.

“These claims have not been confirmed by geological studies. There is a debate whether there even is enough oil to justify the project,” she said.

During their visit to Alaska, the delegation made stops in the North Slope, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Chickaloon.

“For us, what was useful were conversations with the ordinary people,” said Yury Vasilyev, a forestry specialist and an environmental studies teacher at Sokol (falcon) public environmental organization for children.

“Most relevant was to understand relationships between the local communities and the government,” he said.

“It’s not for us to say, here it is good, there it is bad – it’s our job to learn to identify common lessons and also see what has been happening here is what awaits us,” Vasilyev said.

Rachel James of the Alaska Program at Pacific Environment joined the group on their tour. She said the delegation was able to speak to elders and young people about the changes they face.

“I believe the participants got a good overview of the benefits and challenges of these changes,” James said.

“We deeply appreciated that the people of Nuiqsut and Barrow who were very warm and generous to our group.’a0Perhaps the most learning went on’a0over the dining room table.”‘a0

“I’m afraid the deer are just gonna stand there. It may be a very slow walk, with the animals sticking their noses in people’s pockets, looking for something to eat” 

“To promote the sale of reindeer meat and furs, Lomen and Company collaborate with Macy’s Department Stores to stage annual Christmas parades with Santa Clauses and teams of reindeer driven by Sami and Native herders from Alaska. Matthis Ivar Klementsen Nillika is the first Santa. These parades extend into the 1930s. Participating cities include Portland, St. Paul, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Brooklyn. The Lomen brothers write fake children’s letters asking about Santa Claus, which are published in U.S. newspapers. Because of the letters and the parades, Santa Claus and reindeer become an integral part of the North American Christmas story”.

Andersen also pointed out that Coca Cola and Walt Disney used reindeer in their advertising campaigns, solidifying the connection between reindeer, Santa and the North Pole.

“If a person knows how to manage a reindeer herd, which involves managing vegetation, soil, and wildlife she or he could use those principals to manage and sustain almost any other resource” according to Greg Finstad, the manager of UAF’s reindeer research program. Traditional knowledge will be a key part of the programme.