Reindeer Blog

The WWF Global Arctic Programme has just released its quarterly publication ‘The Circle’. This edition has a focus on reindeer herding and caribou, entitled Reindeer and Caribou: Herds and Livelihood in Transition. This edition focusses on a number of themes that are current in the world of reindeer and caribou. Articles cover global warming, wild [...]

(Arctic Sounder) Pacific Environment, an international environmental NGO focused on protecting the living environment of the Pacific Rim, will travel to Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Russia  (March 7-16) with a group of indigenous leaders from the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, as part of a cultural and informational exchange to strengthen ties between [...]

Across the Far North, populations of caribou — an indispensable source of food and clothing for indigenous people — are in steep decline. Scientists point to rising temperatures and a resource-development boom as the prime culprits. by Ed Struzik, from Environment 360 In late July, a group of Inuit hunters set off by boat along [...]

By: Bob Weber, THE CANADIAN PRESS YELLOWKNIFE – Once, caribou wandered over the Arctic tundra in herds that took days to pass. So great were their numbers – even 20 years ago – that they were able to shake off man’s puny imprint on the great barren lands like so many flies on a rump. “There [...]

ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER TUNDRA, Yukon Territory (Source: AP) — Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it’s not just here. Across the tundra 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the east, Canada’s Beverly [...]

Reindeer and caribou numbers are plummeting around the world. The first global review of their status has found that populations are declining almost everywhere they live, from Alaska and Canada, to Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia. The iconic deer is vital to indigenous peoples around the circumpolar north. Yet it is increasingly difficult for the deer [...]

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 [...]

(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. [...]

(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 [...]

(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 [...]