Research by Sami experts shows that sterilized males can grow larger and so are better at digging for food — as Arctic temperatures vary more, thawing snow often refreezes to form thick ice over lichen pastures.

Neutered males are more able to break through ice with their hooves or antlers, and seem more willing than other males to move aside and share food with calves that can die of starvation in bad freeze-thaw winters like 2000-01.

“To make herds more resilient in the future, we need to re-learn the traditional knowledge of castration,” said professor Svein Mathiesen, coordinator of the University of the Arctic’s Institute of Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry.

More castration “could be useful to adapt to climate change,” he told Reuters in the Arctic city of Tromsoe. “These animals are very good diggers for the small calves in the most critical period of the winter.” Pasture this year is good.

Castration has traditionally been used by reindeer herders, partly to make wild animals more docile. Herders on the Yamal peninsula in Russia still neuter about half of all males — usually by biting into the testicles with their teeth.

Far fewer animals are castrated outside Russia. About 100,000 Sami own about 2.5 million reindeer in homelands in the Nordic countries and Russia.

HALF-CASTRATION

The traditional Sami biting technique aims for “half-castration” — under which the animals become sterile but still produce some of the male hormone testosterone that promotes muscle growth.

Sami in Norway, where laws limit castration to surgery with anesthetics, are now experimenting with a vaccine to recreate the effects of half-castration.

No interest in sex also helps neutered males in winter.

“Males castrated in the traditional way would have an increased chance of survival over other males since they maintain body weight and condition during the rutting season,” according to a research document by Eli Risten Nergaard of Sami University College.

The Arctic region is warming at double the global rate in a trend blamed by the U.N.’s panel of climate scientists on greenhouse gases from mankind’s burning of fossil fuels.

Yamal herders castrate many of their reindeer, partly because they need strong, docile animals to pull heavy sleds. In Norway, Sami have come to rely on snow-scooters and get most money for calf meat, meaning most males are slaughtered young.

The Sami castration study indicates the complexities of adapting to the impacts of climate change. Many other scientists are focusing on issues such as how to cope with river floods or rising sea levels, or ways to develop drought-resistant crops.

Castrated reindeer also keep their antlers for much of the winter while normal males shed their antlers each autumn after the mating season. That implies that Rudolph, pulling Father Christmas’s sled, has been castrated.

Source: REUTERS

Today, reindeer herds migrate over major parts of the peninsula and unlike reindeer husbandry in the neighbouring Finland, fences are not widely used there.

Governor Dmitriyenko says the changing climate makes it increasingly difficult to gather the herds at slaughter time because the rivers now freeze later than before.

Although this was a small piece in a lengthy article, were such a plan to be carried out, it would dramatically alter reindeer husbandry in the region. Interestingly, the Governor identifies climate change as being the reason for the introduction of fencing while experience from Scandinavia show that fencing is more related to herd control by the authorities and reduced flexibility for herders. Fencing also has a dramatic impact on the landscape and breaks up traditional migratory patterns.

Source: Ведомости

Другая инновационная идея связана с другим традиционным промыслом — оленеводством. Сейчас по старинке олени пасутся по всему Кольскому полуострову. Но климат изменяется, и, когда приходит время забоя, стада не могут вернуться вовремя, потому что реки, по которым они раньше возвращались, не успевают замерзнуть или уже вскрываются. В результате забой начинается позже, соответственно, нагульность падает. Мы хотим перевести содержание оленьих стад в загоны периметром 100-200 км. Это повысит продуктивность оленеводства. Кроме того, при загонном методе содержания возникает новый бизнес. Рога молодых оленей могут использоваться в фармпроизводстве. Сырье, производимое в области, отправляется для переработки в Норвегию. Мы сейчас работаем над тем, чтобы увеличить поставки.

But warm winters in recent years have forced herders here in the far northern Kola Peninsula to delay for months the rounding up of their reindeer from the vast tundra — at great economic cost.

“We’ve had to move the slaughter forwards from December to February because the lakes haven’t frozen over,” said Vladimir Filippov, an ethnic Komi herder who heads the farm Tundra, the main employer in this remote village.

These reindeer have lost roughly 20 percent of their weight during the extra months spent in the tundra while herders waited for the ice to thicken enough for the forced migration.

“It’s not a small but a huge problem for us and a constant worry,” said Filippov.

With meat sold at 4.34-6.01 dollars per kilogram (2.2 pounds), it can amount to a loss of up to 167,000 dollars per year. “That’s a huge loss,” Filippov sighed.

Over the past decade average temperatures have risen by 0.7 degrees C (1.25 degrees F) and satellite images show melting ice cover on the Arctic pole, said Anatoly Semyonov of the regional Murmansk state climate monitoring agency.

Even though 2010 has been relatively icy, herders who have faced more than a decade of mild winters dismiss the general scepticism amongst the Russian public over global warming.

Climate changes has also disrupted the breeding cycle and made it tough for reindeer to feed on lichen beneath the snow as late thaws and freezing rain create an impervious ice coating, veterinarian Vasili Pidgayetsky said.

At Tundra, global warming is forcing innovation.

Last year, the farm entered a proposal to build freeze-storage sites powered by wind turbines near grazing grounds to avoid the need to cross the vast tundra for slaughter in a grant contest run by the World Bank.

“We could kill the reindeer in situ in December and carry the meat back to the village by snowmobile,” said Tundra’s director Viktor Startsev.

It is a radical idea that is not without opposition amid the indigenous Saami and Komi-Izhems herders clinging fast to age-old way of life on the peninsula.

“Of course, the older generation says this isn’t right,” admitted Startsev.

The herding crisis began here with the Soviet experiment: Herders were moved from their pastures to Lovozero in the collectivization of the 1930s and forced resettlements in the 1960s to make way for military and industrial activity.

Valentina Sovkina, an expert with the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, was one of hundreds of Saami children who were torn from their parents and placed in dormitories.

“They were tragic years when families were split, mine too. I saw it fall apart,” she said. “I use to live half a year in the tundra… We slept on reindeer pelts but then the authorities insisted each child had to have a bed.”

The Soviet changes led many commit suicide and turn to drink, she said.

Today, many have left Lovozero and few young people in the impoverished village of 3,000 want to take up their forefathers’ profession.

Rubbing his mittened hands in frigid exhaustion, 42-year-old Grigory Khatanzei said he began herding at 16 and recalled how much tougher the job was without cell phones and snowmobiles — using sleighs and dogs.

Despite satellite television and other improvements at bases in the tundra, “My kids, the young don’t do this; they don’t want this work probably because it pays so little,” he said.

The average herder earns 7,000 rubles (234 dollars) a month and lives in the tundra in shifts between March and November.

With less people to mind the herd, squeezed by industrial growth and powerless before armed poachers, reindeer numbers have dropped drastically.

By the end of World War II — during which reindeer brigades transported Soviet armed forces — the Tundra farm had 43,000 animals. In 2010, some 26,000 reindeer are left.

The reindeer and caribou herds are in steady decline across the Arctic, the first global study of their numbers published in 2009 found.

“The vast degree of global change in the north casts doubt on the species’ ability to recover,” study author Liv Vors of the University of Alberta, Canada told AFP.

In the last sprint of the day-long, 50-kilometre (30-mile) rampage over the tundra, herders chase alongside, flapping their arms to spur on reindeer.

When one sinks exhausted into the snow, they swoop in and drag it by the antlers onto wood sleds at the back of their snowmobiles.

“We’re always worried, not only because of climate change,” Filippov said. “I’m afraid that if people don’t pay attention to reindeer herding, it may die away.”

Source: AFP/ France 24

Russian scientists have doubts over whether global warming is here to stay and whether it’s man made. But for the Saami in Russia’s north, the mild winters already pose a threat to their traditional way of life. All around the Arctic, the effects of a temperature rise are visible, and native inhabitants of the tundras in Europa, Asia and North America are struggling with the new reality.

That’s also true for the Saami reindeer herders on Russia’s Kola Peninsula, an area bordering on Norway and Finnish Lapland. But, in Russia, climate change is not a hot-button issue, nor is much attention being paid to the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen. Russian scientists say they have no evidence that global warming is a long-term trend, and doubt whether it is a man-made phenomenon.

A Little Ice Age?

In the country’s northern port in the town of Murmansk, the Marine Biological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences monitors life in and around the Barents Sea.

The institute has amassed an impressive database concerning temperature and salinity of the sea over the course of the 20th century. Referring to the statistics, biologist Pavel Makarevich says there are clear cycles during which both temperature and salinity rise and fall. These cycles, he says, are related to solar activity.

“In my opinion and that of our institute, the problems connected to the current stage of warming are being exaggerated,” he says. “What we are dealing with is not a global warming of the atmosphere or of the oceans.”

Makarevich expects a normalization of Arctic temperatures in the coming years. This view appears to have the support of a growing number of Russian scientists. Some even predict a temporary cooling of temperatures towards the middle of this century, a phenomenon known as a ”Little Ice Age.”

Shorter winters

But for the Saami reindeer herders on Russia’s Kola Peninsula between the Barents and the White Sea, a drop in temperature is urgently needed. Over the last few years, the winters have become milder and milder, threatening the traditional lifestyle of the Saami.

This year again, the onset of winter was late in northern Russia. Normally, the tundra would already be covered by a deep layer of snow, and the numerous lakes would have a thick layer of ice.

But snow cover is minimal and some of the lakes are not even frozen yet. For native reindeer herders, that’s a problem, because the traditional slaughter season has to be postponed.

“The slaughter used to start in early November,” says herder Nikolai Filippov. “At that time, the ice is usually strong enough to carry the reindeer. But over the past few years, the ice has been weak and sparse, so we cannot travel, and the slaughter has to be postponed until just before the New Year. This year, yields will be minimal.”

Each fall, the big reindeer herds are somewhere on the vast expanses of the Kola Peninsula. At the onset of winter, they have to be found and driven to Lovozero, the center of the Russian Saami community. But that can only happen under true winter conditions.

“Last year it was exactly the same. This year we do not know yet how the herds are, and what will happen later in the autumn,” Filippov says.

“Sometimes it is still raining around the New Year, and you cannot go over bare ice with the reindeer. So then you will have to wait until after the New Year. In fact, the winter only starts in January. For now it is a mixture of frost and thaw.”

The capricious weather has all kinds of practical consequences for the everyday life of the Saami. Nikolai Filippov and his wife Maria live in a chum, a traditional Saami tipi-like tent with a hole in the top to let out the smoke.

Maria used to prepare lots of food for the winter. But now that is out of the question, because the thaw often comes in the middle of winter and the meat can no longer be preserved. The tundra is no longer a reliable natural refrigerator.

“In the old days it never rained in December,” says Maria Filippova. “When it rains in winter, the snow disappears and we can’t move on with our animals to search for reindeer moss.”

For thousands of years, the Saami lived according to an ancient and extremely reliable calendar. But today, says Nikolai Filippov, everything seems to be off course. For him, there is no question that nature is changing. What is happening in the tundra today is something the 59-year-old has never seen before.

The Arctic as a future trading route

The city of Murmansk, a few hours’ drive to the north, seems a world away. In the harbor, there’s the Lenin – the first Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker built in the 1950s. Today, the heavy vessel is a museum. Andrei Smirnov was the Lenin’s last captain when the ship was retired in 1989.

“No other country has boundaries like Russia that stretch so far to the North,” Smirnov says. He is convinced that Russia will need icebreakers like this one, now and in the future.

“We have been using the northern passage since 1932. It is a sea route of national significance, and since 1991, foreign ships have also been allowed to use it. This year as well, foreigners have used the passage, and we have successfully guided them through with our icebreakers.”

Smirnov is referring to ships belonging to the German company Beluga. Earlier this year, they made an impressive voyage from South Korea to Rotterdam, via the Arctic seas north of Russia.

The trip was meant to prove that the North Pole ice is retreating as a result of global warming, and that the northern passage could become an attractive, much shorter alternative for existing routes like the one via the Suez Canal. It sounds great, but longtime members of Russia’s Northern Fleet, such as Nikolai Babich, can only laugh at the thought..

“Saying that one could navigate in the polar seas without the help of icebreakers, or even reach the North Pole unhindered, no, that is not serious,” says Babich.

Babich feels at home in the Russian Arctic. He has visited almost every corner of it during  the last 40 years, and he claims there is no-one like him who has studied the area in such detail. The recent rise in global temperature has surprised neither him nor his colleagues. It has happened in the past, he says, and it will happen again.

“The natural processes we have seen during the past decade are mainly the result of the sun’s activity. They show a slight increase in temperature, and as a result, Arctic ice has receded,” he says.

But according to Babich, the situation is changing. The Arctic, he says, is already cooling, not warming. And the Russian government is attentively listening to those scientists who, like Babich, are predicting a cold spell.

SOURCE – Deutsche Welle

Author: Geert Groot Koerkamp
Editor: Deanne Corbett

“Over the past three years, I’ve had to give some hay to my 800 reindeer during the coldest months. It’s more expensive and it gives me more work,” said Jan Egil Trasti, a reindeer herder from the native Sami people.

The reason: the lichen his animals graze on has become tougher to find as winter temperatures rise. The snow thaws, and along with rain, then freezes anew — covering the ground in layers impervious to all but the most tenacious reindeer.

Grazing land is also disappearing under the weight of industry as buildings, pipelines, roads and other infrastructure increasingly dot old pastures.

Trasti’s nomadic ancestors have raised these beasts for hundreds of years. His grandfather worked the Russian tundra before moving to the Norwegian coast.

“I have it in my blood. I hope one of my sons will take over,” the herder said. He has, though, a hint of doubt in his eyes, his meagre earnings well below the average Norwegian salary.

Only a minority of Sami — some 3,000 — make their living raising and herding in Norway, home to around 240,000 reindeer.

In this month of November, just weeks ahead of a key UN climate summit in Denmark, snow has not yet blanketed the flora in the Far North.

Indeed temperatures in this region near the Barents Sea are unseasonably mild, above zero degrees Celsius.

In the past, when the snows have come, they have generally fallen on dry ground, whereas now they fall on lichen engorged with water.

Trasti is no scientist, and environmental experts hesitate to link specific weather events to long-term climate change, but trends over the last several decades have clearly shown the Arctic hit hard by global warming.

In September, a study in the journal Science reported dramatic effects on animals in the Arctic due to a one-degree Celsius warming over the past 150 years.

The Arctic tends to warm three times faster than elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere because of a phenomenon called Arctic amplification — a separate study in the same journal noted that summer temperatures were some 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than they should have been by the year 2000.

Jonathan Colman, specialist in “reindeer ecology” at the University of Oslo, explained that sometimes “there’s wet ice in the lichen.”

“It gets into their stomachs and they can’t digest the food.”

To avoid losing precious livestock, the Sami are forced to move reindeer to drier ground, meaning it is more important than ever to respect the tradition of driving herds across the entire north of the nation.

An animal can sell for 240 euros (359 dollars), and its meat for around seven euros a kilogramme (10.46 dollars per 2.2 pounds).

Trasti can make extra money selling the hides or antlers to tourists, and also gets compensation if his animals are killed by predators.

Norwegian Sami follow the herd with vehicles, but their cousins in Russia still accompany the animals with sleds, camping as they go.

But the drive, and the ability to follow the reindeer, has been increasingly hampered by industrialisation.

An iron ore mine which was closed down 15 years ago has re-opened nearby, while elsewhere liquid gas terminals, wind farms and roads are dotted across, or separate, traditional pastures.

The International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry has expressed regret that “the herders have only a marginal influence on the development of their own traditional lands.”

That’s despite a law that “Norway was built on the territory of two people, the Sami and the Norwegians,” said Christina Henriksen, a Sami who coordinates an aid programme for native peoples in the Arctic region.

“For me, being a Sami means herding reindeer,” said Trasti, who does not speak his native language.

“My parents weren’t allowed to speak Sami at school in the 60′s,” he said, and out of guilt, they “didn’t teach us the language.”

For the moment though, reindeer numbers are holding up under the strain of global warming, but that’s a fact Colman puts down to their very resilience.

“If reindeer weren’t as adaptable, there wouldn’t be any left,” he said.

Distinguished Scientist
The renowned scientist Dr. Robert W. Corell has accepted a professorship in this new Arctic Institute. Dr Corell brings with him an impressive CV and unique experience for the position, which is financed jointly by the Sámi University College and the International Center for Reindeer Husbandry.

Corell was the leader of the Arctic Council project ACIA (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment), is head of the CAI (Climate Action Initiative), a senior adviser to the Global Environment and Technology Foundation, and former vice president at the H. John Heinz II Center for Science, Economics and Environment .

Al Gore’s adviser
Dr. Corell has been working a lot with research on climate and global change in addition to the interaction between research and policy, particularly research that focuses on global and regional climate change and related environmental issues.

In Tromsø in April 2009 Dr. Corell led the Melting Ice Conference with Vice President Al Gore and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and since 2000 he has worked with reindeer herders and researchers in Kautokeino.

Dr. Robert Corell had the original idea for the EALÁT project (Reindeer Herders vulnerability networks study: Reindeer pastoralism in a changing climate) which later was initiated by the Association of World Reindeer Herders. He has been a member of the research group in EALÁT since 2005 and has published several articles together with this group.

Dr. Corell is also a researcher for Arctic Governance Project, an international arctic management study.

Includes Arctic indigenous people
The professorship is awarded to Dr. Corell to honor and recognize his willingness to include the Arctic Indigenous Peoples and their knowledge and understanding in research on the effects of global change.

The reindeer herding societies in all arctic and subarctic regions now face pervasive changes. The challenges of climate change, increased development and globalization are so extensive that we must use the best available evidence in order to adapt to the future.

But which and whose knowledge is this? Of course, the science-based knowledge has been and will continue to be important. But often the best available evidence in fact is the knowledge of the reindeer herders – the traditional knowledge that is developed through careful observation of reindeer and nature, transmitted from generation to generation, and used every day by both reindeer herders in the tundra and the taiga.

Dr. Robert Corell is widely known for hes support to include the Arctic indigenous peoples in research and reviews, and with this new position he will be better able to continue to support the ongoing efforts to develop adaptation strategies for future climate change in Arctic communities.

Read the press release and view pictures here on the Reindeer Portal

www.nrk.no/sami

Climate and climate change affects reproduction and survival of all living organisms.

This thesis includes several experiments where winter conditions were improved or worsened by manipulating access to feed to deer females.

- A reduction in winter conditions led to females next summer reduced investment in calf, and instead concentrated on building up body reserves, “explains Bård-Jørgen Bårdsen.

A similar improvement in winter conditions, however, had to take place over several years before the females were willing to increase their reproductive investment.

Larger females, but fewer calves

This study shows that reindeer have developed a risk-sensitive investment strategy in which females build fat reserves based on what kind of winter they expect to come.

- Increased rainfall and milder winters in Finnmark will in line with these studies in future provide significantly lower reindeer numbers and larger animals with low willingness to invest in calf production, Bårdsen says.

However, one reindeer herder interviewed by NRK Sami Radio, was sceptical to towards this research.

You can watch the video here