Reindeer Blog

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 [...]

(Source - Ed Struzik, The Province, see below) Warm, wet winters and hot, dry summers reduce numbers. In the summer of 1996, biologist Frank Miller was flying along the coast of Bathurst Island searching for Peary caribou, found only in the High Arctic of Canada, when he spied a dark spot on the sea ice.
Flying [...]

(Picture Eric Post)  Global warming may be the reason for a decrease in the number of caribou calves being born in West Greenland, U.S. researchers said.Biologist Eric Post said data show the timing of peak food availability no longer corresponds to the timing of caribou births, the university said Friday in release. 
The study, conducted in [...]

(This article from CBC News 08.01.2008) More than 3,000 reindeer in the Northwest Territories have somehow disappeared, leaving herders scrambling to find them and prompting concerns about what threats the lost reindeer may pose to wild caribou.
The territory’s only reindeer herd inhabits the northern part of the N.W.T., living unsupervised on Richards Island near Tuktoyaktuk [...]

Industry analysts say that future development on the Yamal peninsula, the world’s largest area of reindeer husbandry, will dwarf Shtokman, another giant deposit, located in the stormy Barents Sea. Yamal holds around one third of Gazprom’s reserves, or more than 10 trillion cubic metres. Thanks to these reserves, Gazprom have been flexing their muscles towards foreign [...]

With climate change expected to increase temperature fluctuations and variability most particularly in the Arctic, the population crash of the so called Peary caribou in the Canadian Arctic gives some insight to what happens to rangifer tarandus when pastures are locked out as a result of frequent freezing and thawing.

In northwestern North America, recent warming has [...]

(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, and [...]

In Iqaluit, Nunavut, a national scientific advisory board Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has recommended that the federal government place the Peary caribou on the endangered species list.

photo courtesy of John Nagy/GNWT

This recommendation was disputed local hunters and trappers, even though the numbers do speak of of a [...]