Reindeer Blog

The Board of the University of the Arctic (UArctic) has approved the establishment of UArctic Institute for Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry, as a result of the International Polar Year (IPY) project and the IPY EALÁT project.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre will exploit Swedish leadership role in the EU and the Barents co-operation to get wider European interest in the North and the Arctic. – From a Norwegian point of view, it is interesting that Sweden in a few month, have the Presidency of both EU and Barents Cooperation. Wednesday [...]

(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 [...]

(Pic. Canadian Press) An international network of scientists is examining caribou and wild reindeer herds across the Arctic, from Alaska and the Yukon to Russia and Greenland, in a report from CBC. The four-year, $4-million International Polar Year project aims to gather consistent data across the circumpolar region on those herds, how they are changing, [...]

So said Frederic Hauge of Bellona on the issue of Norway’s dilemma of being an oil and gas powerhouse, to the Washington Post today. Sami President in Norway Aili Keskitalo was also interviewed and she pointed out that Sami will still be here when the oil has dried up and climate change is impacting traditional [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

According to Reuters and other business sources, Gazprom has budgeted $1 bn for investments into the Yamal peninsula. Production at the Yamal Peninsula is due to offset the decline in Gazprom’s traditional West Siberian gas province from the start of next decade. GAZPROM is expected to invest $1.3 bn this year out of a total [...]

When one thinks of oil and gas development in Arctic Russia, one company springs to mind: the ubiquitous GAZPROM . There are others though – Novatek, LUKoil and TNK-BP for example and they are clamouring for access to Gazprom pipelines, particularly as experts think that GAZPROM might have problems fulfilling its foreign gas commitments in [...]

At the launch of the Canadian IPY, Minister for Northern Affairs Jim Prentice said “elders and other knowledge keepers” can make a big contribution to research and that many researchers have been encouraged to integrate Western science and traditional aboriginal knowledge into their polar research according to a March 9 report in the Nunatsiaq News. [...]