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

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKIY. 22 October. VOSTOK-MEDIA. Parliament of Kamchatskiy krai is going to increase population of reindeer which is now in bad condition.
As Minister of Agriculture and Trade of Kamchatskiy Krai Andrey Sizintsev says Kamchatka will receive 1 500 north reindeer from Chukotka in a month. Animals are bought for increasing population in Kamchatka. In the beginning of November reindeer will be directed to the borders of two regions where reindeer herdsmen from Kamchatka will take them to their herds.
Money issue is not being announced for now as it is not a completed matter.
Parliament of Kamchatka is going to prolong cooperation with Chukotka.

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….

President Medvedev with Chukchi Herders outside their Yaranga. Photo: Anatoly Zhdanov

This week, President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian President in history to visit Chukotka. Accompanied by current Governor Kopin and former Governor Roman Abramovich, Medvedev also visited Kanchalan (site of EALAT Information workshop earlier this year) and a brigade on the tundra.

Komsomolskaya Pravda had an article about the visit by Yelena Kriyakina – reproduced below.

Yesterday was an unusual day for President Dmitriy Medvedev. He became the first president in Russia’s history to visit Chukotka. Medvedev headed to the northern corner of the Far East to attend a regional development conference. Early on in his trip, Medvedev visited the Kanchalan village 70 kilometers outside Chukotka’s capital, Anadyr. Kanchalan was a pleasant sight for the Moscow delegation with its various brightly colored homes and clean air and streets.

Present and past Chukotka governors Roman Kopin and Roman Abramovich accompanied President Medvedev during his visit. The president was observant and attentive, standing an arm’s length from the two regional politicians with his hands in his jeans pockets. Medvedev came away from the visit convinced Chukotka residents don’t live that badly after all. One family he visited, the Bukashkeevs, even had two computers. Both belonged to the children. Medvedev reminded the kids not to get too caught up in games and to continue studying astutely. He then boarded a helicopter and headed to the Tundra to get a look at how Russia’s indigenous nomads live today. The aboriginal peoples met Medvedev beating shaman drums.

“Hello!” Medvedev said.

“Hello! We’re glad you’ve come to visit us,” they replied.

At that moment, a small child resting in his mother’s arms reached out to Medvedev. The president touched his nose lovingly. A local resident shouted: “He‘s saluting you!” Medvedev then entered the hut nearby. A pile of smoke rose from within.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Reindeer intestines,” the owners answered. “They‘re frying.”

When he left , a thermos of hot tea and reindeer meat awaited him. Medvedev tried the local cuisine and asked about meat: “I hope this is reindeer?” The local residents said it was, after which he replied: “I also have presents for you all! Candy from Moscow.”

Medvedev’s assistants began unloading heavy brown trunks of candy. The children grabbed as much as they could.

Later, the president decided to take a peek at the herd of reindeer nearby.

“So, maybe we should go over to the reindeer?” Medvedev asked Arkadiy Makushkin, director of the Kanchalanskiy farm. But the latter didn’t want the president to have to drudge through the wet mud and said: “Ah, they’ll come over themselves!” After a few moments, though, he saw the president was short for time and the reindeer weren’t rushing over to meet the delegation.

“Well, if it’s not too complicated, let’s go over ourselves?!” he asked.

“Of course!” Medvedev said and walked over.

The security service began worrying slightly. “Who knows what these reindeers might be up to?” they thought.

Abramovich calmed the agents down immediately. “They won’t do anything,” he said. “They’re afraid themselves.”

Medvedev had already walked close enough to the herd to take in the impressive view: 3,400 reindeer walked attentively in circles in front of him. But as the president still had to attend the Chukotka development conference, he bid the local residents farewell and headed to the helicopter. They wished Medvedev good health and success, asked him to visit again and shouted: “Russia! Medvedev! Chukotka!”

The conference began at 20:30, Chukotka time — only 11:30 in the morning in Moscow.

“A Chukotka good evening and a Moscow good morning to you!” Medvedev said, greeting the participants of the conference. He quickly got to the point. “The government’s main aim is to provide local residents with normal conditions for subsistence.”

Medvedev said the quality of life had drastically improved in the region in recent years. However, he said, the infant death rate still exceeds the national average. Residents are continuing to leave the region and problems with energy and transport persist. He added that Chukotka has the potential to become a tourist center and play a role in effectively assimilating the Artic.

The president told ministers and department heads to get busy with the Far East and spend more time in the region to avoid a strategic conference later.

“You need to get going!” Medvedev told the officials. The Chukotka conference was the first in a series of regional conferences in the Far East. Today, the president will visit Magadan. On Thursday, he will arrive to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.

Regional Development  Minister Dmitriy Kozak said a plan to advance Russia’s smaller native peoples, and a strategy for developing the Far East and Baykal region will be ready by the year’s end.

More: ITAR-TASS.

This is a surprising move, as it seemed that he had grown tired of governing Chukotka (he spends only a handful of days a year there), but he may have been moved to action by the pleas of the former speaker Vasily Nazarenko who offered to step down if Abramovich promised to return.

New Governor Kopin is part of the young team that Abramovich created to transform the region – and he has been head of the Chaunsky and Bilibino regions, has a good knowledge of the issues facing reindeer husbandry and other traditional livelihoods in the region. Quoted in a Times article from 2003, Kopin said,

To love this place you have to be a particular kind of person or to have been born here.

Looking back, however, it seems that the then-34-year-old oligarch wanted to show the world how he could actually transform an isolated and neglected area into a prosperous region.

And he did just that over the next seven years of his governorship. His professional team of managers pulled Chukotka out of its state of crisis. New schools and hospitals were built, housing units were repaired and investment flowed into the region. Last year the government approved a development program for Chukotka based on the region’s mineral resources that was submitted by Abramovich’s Millhouse Capital company, which owns two gold mines there.

Already, cash revenues in Chukotka are among the highest in Russia, lagging behind only Tyumen, Yamal-Nenets and the Moscow region, and average salaries surpass those in both Moscow and Tyumen. In addition, while Abramovich was governor, the number of people who left Chukotka for other cities dropped, and both alcoholism and the crime rate declined. 
(From the Moscow Times) 

The London Independent noted that he had already tried to resign in 2006, but was dissuaded by Putin.

More was in the New York Times and the Times of London.

His resignation comes just a week before the official opening of his flagship project in Chukotka – the $750 Million Kinross gold mine, as reported in the Moscow Times,

Canadian miner Kinross Gold launched a new gold processing plant in the Chukotka autonomous district Wednesday, as the remote region prepares to more than triple gold output this year, the regional government said.

The plant will process ore from the Kupol field, owned 75 percent by Kinross and 25 percent by Chukotka, which could make Kinross the second-largest gold miner in Russia after Polyus.

Total investment in Kupol, including exploration, construction of the plant and associated infrastructure, exceeded $750 million, the Chukotka administration said in a statement. It said the plant would produce from 13.8 tons to 14.6 tons of precious metals, mainly gold and silver, this year. It will boost the amount of ore processed daily to 3,000 tons in October from an initial 1,500 tons

Read the full story here

Watch the related video here

Also in this Series..

Reindeer thriving in Russia’s Far East after years of decline

Chukotka gets windfall from national projects 

Chukotka to strike gold

(Pic: Philip Burgess. Election station in Anadyr, March 2nd, Chukotka) Native peoples were strongly represented in the election materials on view in the regional capital, Anadyr. Election time in Russia is one of the few times that Chukotka makes it into the national and international media, as it is the first region in the country to vote, being 9 hours ahead of Moscow. The turnout in Chukotka was one of the highest, with a record 83.5% turnout being widely quoted. The Governor of the okrug, Roman Abramovich was also making one of his rare trips to the region for the election, his private Boeing 767 sitting on the Anadyr runway as the EALAT team flew home.

(Pic: Svein Mathiesen. Anders Oskal at the new slaughter house in Kanchalan) The impact of the Governors policies on Chukotka are as visible as they are far reaching. ‘Roman Abramovich’s Chukotka Project’ in openDemocracy is an interesting account of the oligarch’s impact, which for reindeer herders is most visible in the construction of a modern slaughter house in the village of Kanchalan, a village of 750 people, the vast majority of whom are Chukchi and involved in reindeer husbandry.

Read a brief seminar report and pictures here on the Reindeer Portal