Reindeer Blog

FAIRBANKS (AP) — For most hungry Alaskans, reindeer meat doesn’t represent much more than a spicy sausage link. University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers want to know if there’s more potential for the state’s roughly 18,000 reindeer. A new market study is under way to see whether local consumers are interested in high-end cuts of reindeer, [...]

Farmers and herders in Northern Finland have threatened to shoot reindeer from Norway.  “Between December 2009 and May 2010, we have counted, and sent back about 4200 Norwegian reindeer, ” said Assistant Police Chief in Peräpohjola police in Finland, Ossi Hyvönen.  Hyvönen estimated the damage to pastures to be as much as 120,000 Euros, just [...]

While the world has heard a lot about the impact of the Icelandic volcano on air traffic and the economy, what about its impact on Iceland’s reindeer? In the last few weeks, the world could hardly have failed to have heard about the Icelandic volcano with the difficult to pronounce (for non Icelandic speakers) name. [...]

Каковы реальные объемы браконьерства в Карелии? На российско-литовской границе задержали петрозаводских предпринимателей, пытавшихся незаконно вывезти более 800 (!) килограммов рогов северных оленей. Произошло это на карельской таможне, где нарушители оформляли разрешение на экспорт рогов лося и их лома. Как рассказали нам в пресс-службе карельской таможни, у их сотрудников сразу возникло подозрение, что только рогами лося [...]

A group of businessmen from the Republic of Karelia in April unsuccessful tried to smuggle 800 kg of reindeer horns from Russia to Latvia. The smugglers where caught by customs officers in Pskov Oblast near the border to Latvia. In the truck, the customs officers found 495 units of reindeer horn with a total weight [...]

(Source: SitNews) – Thursday’s birth of a 10-pound male reindeer calf at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm made worldwide agricultural history: It marks the culmination of the first documented successful pregnancy of a reindeer by artificial insemination using frozen-and-thawed semen. The calf appeared at 3 p.m. on April 22, as University of Alaska Fairbanks Reindeer Research [...]

На сайте информационного агентства ИА SAKHALIFE.RU опубликована информация о состоянии оленеводства в Якутии. Домашнее оленеводство республики в последние годы развивается очень динамично: растет поголовье оленей, стабилизируются показатели сохранности оленей и тугутов. Основой положительной динамики развития отрасли стало комплексное решение проблем, начиная от производственных и заканчивая решением вопросов социальной направленности. О том, как идет работа в [...]

The Saami Council, the NGO that represents the Sami people in all four countries in which they live have released a strongly worded press release criticising the German bank KfW IPEX for their funding of a giant wind power project in Sami reindeer herding areas, in contravention of the OECD Convention on Multilateral Enterprises. In [...]

In northern Norway, summer pastures for reindeer are often located on the coastal islands of Finnmark and Troms counties. Traditionally, reindeer swim across from the mainland to the islands but with increasing pasture losses and migratory route fragmentation, since the early 1970s, many herders use a reindeer ‘ferry’ to transport reindeer over distances that have [...]

The Norwegian Reindeer Husbandry Administration is advising people in the northern Troms and Nordland areas to be particularly aware of reindeer this spring due to difficult grazing and operating conditions.  Easter is a hugely popular holiday period for Norwegians and people are on the move and outdoors.  Reindeer in northern Troms and Nordland have had [...]