Regular operation of the 572 km long railroad to its terminal point – the Karskaya station – was launched in February 15. The line connects major regional installations like the Bovanenkovo gas field with national key infrastructure.

The Obskaya-Bovanenkovo railway line will enable Gazprom to easily ship huge quantities of goods and construction materials to its field development sites in Yamal.

“The opening of this railway will facilitate all-year-round, quick, cost efficient and not-weather-dependent transport of goods and personnel to the fields in Yamal under the harsh Arctic conditions, a press release from Gazprom reads.

Unline other Russian railway lines, the Obskaya-Bovanenkovo line is owned by Gazprom. As previously reported, the Russian Railways have been invited to take over the line, but has shown little interest.

In addition to railway and field development in Yamal, Gazprom is also investing in the laying of the Bovanenkovo-Ukhta gas pipeline.

Source: Gazprom

The award-winning documentary about reindeer herders in the Polar Urals beat 80 films from 27 other countries.

“Nyarma” by Edgar Bartenev focuses on the Nenets people, their customs, family relations, lifestyle, as well as the unique tradition of reindeer herding.

The main character in the documentary is a young Nenets guy who, following the tragic death of his father, becomes the owner of a large herd of 3000 reindeer.

Gosha has to take responsibility not only for his family but for the entire neighborhood – the Polar Ural, according to tradition.

Capturing the spellbound beauty of the landscape, the documentary gives a deep insight into the nature of the indigenous people of the North, moving herds of reindeer.

The St Petersburg-based filmmaker, whose famous teacher was maverick director Alexey German, was quoted as saying that his first trip to the North was when he worked as a doctor in an intensive care unit. He was blown away by the Nenets’ permanent state of enthusiasm and their attitude towards each other, their deer and dogs.

“Relations between the people are amazing. I’ve never seen a husband screaming at his wife or offending his children. The Nenets never beat animals,” Bartenev was quoted as saying.

Source: RT.com

Watch a trailer here: http://www.eastsilver.net/en/east-silver/completed-films/-nyarma-3484/?yearactivity=noac&country=&genere=&director=&producer=&coproducer=&length=&malpha=&fulltext=nyarma&submitButton=Filter

Russia Starts Census of Indigenous Peoples – Download and Listen to MP 3 (Source Voice of Russia)

Съезду предстоит выработать рекомендации для органов власти по повышению эффективности государственной поддержки оленеводства, реализации окружного законодательства в этой сфере, определить меры развития взаимоотношений оленных людей и нефтяников.  Здесь же пройдёт презентация компании ЛУКОЙЛ, посвященная поддержке традиционной для коренных северян отрасли.

Очередной большой совет оленеводов автономного округа откроется завтра, 11 марта, в 10 часов.  А сегодня вечером на сцене выставочного комплекса “Югра-экспо”  перед его участниками и гостями выступят артисты фольклорного коллектива детского этнокультурно-образовательного центра “Лылынг союм” и молодежного фольклорного коллектива “Эхо родной земли”. Отметим, что с культурой обских угров, их костюмами и национальной кухней смогут познакомиться не только участники форума, но и все желающие: в пятницу на площадке “Югра-Экспо” пройдёт День оленевода со спортивными состязаниями и угощением традиционными северными блюдами.

Источник: Пресс-служба Губернатора Ханты-Мансийского автономного округа

Традиционный уклад жизни ненцев оказывается под угрозой из-за глобального потепления и планов добычи газа.

Этот образ жизни – не затронутый бурями российских революций, гражданских войн и политических репрессий – почувствовал на себе воздействие роста температуры.

Он вызывает резкие погодные изменения – посреди весны вдруг приходят метели и морозы, наносящие жестокие удары по и без того скудной растительности тундры. А это – единственное, чем питаются олени.

Но помимо этой проблемы, на Ямал пришла еще одна: на полуострове – крупнейшие в мире запасы природного газа, и российский газовый гигант “Газпром” приступает к их разработке.

Смотреть видео здесь

(By Luke Harding, The Guardian) For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have herded their reindeer along the Yamal peninsula. But their survival in this remote region of north-west Siberia is under serious threat from climate change as Russia’s ancient permafrost melts.

t is one of the world’s last great wildernesses, a 435-mile long peninsula of lakes and squelching tundra stretching deep into the Arctic Ocean. For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have migrated along the Yamal peninsula. In summer they wander northwards, taking their reindeer with them, across a landscape of boggy ponds, rhododendron-like shrubs and wind-blasted birch trees. In winter they return southwards.

But this remote region of north-west Siberia is now under heavy threat from global warming. Traditionally the Nenets travel across the frozen Ob River in November and set up camp in the southern forests around Nadym. These days, though, this annual winter pilgrimage is delayed. Last year the Nenets, together with many thousands of reindeer, had to wait until late December when the ice was finally thick enough to cross.

“Our reindeer were hungry. There wasn’t enough pasture,” Jakov Japtik, a Nenets reindeer herder, told the Guardian. “The snow is melting sooner, quicker and faster than before. In spring it’s difficult for the reindeer to pull the sledges. They get tired,” Japtik said, speaking in his camp 25kms from Yar-Sale, the capital of Russia’s Arctic Yamal-Nenets district.

Luke Harding on climate change in Russia Link to this audio
Herders say that the peninsula’s weather is increasingly unpredictable – with unseasonal snowstorms when the reindeer give birth in May, and milder longer autumns. In winter temperatures used to go down to -50C. Now they are typically -30C, according to Japtik. “Obviously we prefer -30C. But the changes aren’t good for the reindeer and ultimately what

is good for the reindeer is good for us,” he said, setting off on his sled to round up his itinerant reindeer herd.

Japtik lives on the tundra in a reindeer-skin tent or chum (ital) with his wife, mother, and three-year-old nephew Albert. There is also baby Pasha. The Japtiks live with three other families; the group has around 600 reindeer. The family slaughters a reindeer every couple of weeks, eating it raw and with pasta. They also catch fish – slicing off filets of sushi-like whitefish, taken from the thousands of virgin-lakes across the peninsula.

Here in one of the most remote parts of the planet there are clear signs the environment is under strain. Last year the Nenets arrived at a regular summer camping spot and discovered that half of their lake had disappeared. It had drained away after a landslide. While landslides can occur naturally, scientists say there is unmistakable evidence that Yamal’s ancient permafrost is melting. The Nenets report other curious changes – fewer mosquitoes and a puzzling increase in gadflies.

“It’s an indication of the global warming process, like the opening of the Arctic waters for shipping this summer,” says Vladimir Tchouprov, Greenpeace Russia’s energy unit head. The melting of Russia’s permafrost could have catastrophic results for the world, Tchouprov says, by releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and the potent greenhouse gas methane, that was previously trapped in frozen soil.

Russia – the world’s biggest country by geographical area – is already warming at one and a half times the rate of other parts of the world. If global temperatures do go up by the 4C many scientists fear, the impact on Russia would be disastrous. Much of Russia’s northern region would be turned into impenetrable swamp. Houses in several Arctic towns are already badly subsiding.

Many Russians, however, are sceptical that climate change exists. Others rationalise that it might bring benefits to one of the world’s coldest countries, freeing up a melting Arctic for oil and gas exploration, and extending the country’s brief growing season. Russia’s scientific community seems sceptical of global warming and the Kremlin doesn’t appear to regard the issue as a major domestic problem; public awareness of climate change in Russia is lower than in any other European country.

Western politicians, however, point out that it is in Russia’s interests to take action on climate change and to push for ambitious targets at December’s Copenhagen summit. “There is 5,000 miles of railway track built on permafrost. It could crumble as a result of melting,” Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for climate change, pointed out during a recent visit to Moscow.

However, even Russians working in the Arctic are unconvinced that their country faces a serious climate-change problem. “It’s rubbish. It’s invented. People who spend too long sitting at home have made up climate change,” Alexander Chikmaryov, who runs a remote weather station on the Yamal peninsula, said, standing in his dilapidated station strewn with rusting engine parts and a broken-down wind turbine.

Chikmaryov lives in Marresale, an outpost on the Yamal peninsula’s north-west coast overlooking the Kara Sea. A small community of Nenets hunters live nearby; otherwise there’s nobody for a hundred kilometres. The weather here is, not surprisingly, bitterly cold; the sea freezes nine months of the year. The word Yamal means “end of the world” in Nenets language, and in Marresale you see why.

In fact, Chikmaryov’s own data suggests that global warming is a real problem here too. In 2008 the ice was 164cm thick; this year it is 117cm. Winter temperatures have gone up too – from lows of -50C in 1914, when the station was founded, to -40C today. Every year large chunks of the coast on which the station is precariously perched fall into the sea. On the beach there is a jagged layer of thawing permafrost.

And there are other unnatural signs. On 15 August a large polar bear ambled into Marresale and started rooting through the station’s rubbish bin. “It was 7pm. The bear was enormous. We set off a flare. It ran off,” she recalled. Polar bear sightings are becoming increasingly common – with the bears apparently venturing south from their far-northern habitat in search of food. “They are an impudent lot. They aren’t afraid of humans,” Ludmilla says, gleefully recalling how one polar bear ripped the scalp from a Russian scientist living on Franz Josef Land.

Back on the tundra Japitik was rounding up his reindeer. Some were already back at the camp; their munching resembled the soft clicking of a thousand knitting needles. “I’ve lived all of my life in the tundra,” he said.

“The reindeer for us are everything – food, transport and accommodation. The only thing I hope is that we will be able to carry on with this life.”

“For them it is fortune, for us terror,” said 20-year-old herder Andrei Yezgini, dressed from head to toe in reindeer skin, referring to ambitious plans by state gas giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM) to drill the region Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has described as “the world’s storehouse” of gas and oil.

Putin jetted into the sparsely populated region within the Arctic circle, 2,000 km (1,250 miles) northeast of Moscow, in late September to woo foreign partners to develop a quarter of the world’s known gas reserves [ID:nLO729481].

Experts and the Nenets say industry will damage and pollute the tundra, whose flat marshy terrain switches from marigold russets in summer to thick winter snow and is peppered with disc-like thermokarst lakes and crystal blue waterways.

Nenets migrate north to south over 150 km every year, spending only a few days in one place, living off reindeer and fish and lugging their “chums”, or tents, kerosene lamps and wood-fired stoves on reindeer-pulled sleighs.

“The fact they’ve found deposits here is catastrophic,” said Slava Vanuito, 34, his Asiatic eyes narrowing as a gust of Arctic wind sweeps over a tundra bouncy from the thick carpet of springy moss that feeds the reindeer.

Like many young Nenets men, Vanuito served in the Russian army — he fought against Chechens in the first separatist war — and decided to return to his nomadic life in Yamal, which means “world’s end” in Nenets, a distant relative of Finnish.

Numbering around 42,000, the Nenets are entirely dependent on reindeer, which appear on the Yamal region’s crest, and are animists. Their strict code of superstitions and gender divisions has been virtually untouched for at least a millennium.

BROKEN DEER LEGS

From a Soviet-made helicopter, a bright blue train with 20 wagons can be seen snaking through the tundra, part of a newly-opened railway which experts say heralds severe damage.

Opened by Putin last month, it will serve Russia’s biggest gas field Bovanenkovo at the top of Yamal, which will feed the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany from 2012, and runs around two-thirds of the 700-km-long peninsula.

Yezgini said it is breaking the legs of the deer. “There’s debris and gravel around the tracks, frightening and hurting them.” He added pastures around the track have lost shrubbery.

Bruce Forbes, research professor in global change at the University of Lapland in Finland, said the railway is only the beginning: “We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of destruction,” he told Reuters by telephone.

The government is keen to develop the Yamalo-Nenets region as soon as possible. Last month it proposed tax breaks to entice foreign firms to drill the frozen mass of land, which has field reserves of 16 trillion cubic metres.

Already Russia’s main gas-producing region, Gazprom said it gives Yamal 20 billion roubles ($665 million) every year, but declined to comment on how the money is distributed.

Yamal accounts for more than 90 percent of Gazprom’s gas output, and total revenues last year stood at 3.5 trillion roubles.

Vanuito, sharpening a saw for antler trimming, dismissed such claims by Gazprom as “rubbish”. He said they received a “pittance” of a monthly state stipend of 2,000 roubles ($66).

In January, Forbes sent a research report to the firms urging the coexistence of oil and gas activities with the Nenets by asking companies to respect their demands, such as no illegal hunting by gas workers and the burying of pipelines.

Citing herders and administration officials, he said compensations for pasture degradation and land withdrawals tended to be absorbed by local government and did not reach the Nenets.

“The European Union needs to be more responsible ethically and morally when considering where they want to buy their gas from,” he said, adding Western firms had responded positively to the report.

It is not the first time Russian indigenous people have come under threat from industry. Rights groups say energy firms do not fully respect the culture of the Khanty in Russia’s oil-producing region of Khanty-Mansiysk in west Siberia.

Moscow has offered the Nenets free houses in Yamal’s capital Salekhard, but Forbes said that was missing the point: “Their animals and their space in the tundra give them complete freedom”.

Some state benefits are welcomed by the Nenets — helicopters take them to towns of several hundred people an hour’s flight away and children from age seven are sent to Russian-language schools in towns where they live with other Nenets families.

“I just pray Gazprom won’t change us,” said Yezgini’s mother Valentina, 52. “I want my grandchildren to see our land as it is: beautiful, fresh, full of berries and deer.” (Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Over a year ago, the discovery of a baby mammoth, that has since been named Lyuba (after the wife of the herder that first found the remains), in the permafrost of the Yamal Peninsula was worldwide news. Most reports stated that the mammoth corpse, preserved almost perfectly in the ice, was found by a reindeer herder. Now these herders have names and faces.

The National Geographic is releasing a documentary called ‘Waking the Baby Mammoth’ and Nenets herders Yuri Khudi and Kirill Serotetto and their families critical role in this historic archeological find is acknowleged. View the short clip below for some scenes from Yamal.

National Public Radio also covered the story this week.