Reindeer Blog

Interesting article and superb photography displaying Nenets herders coping with oil and gas installations on their migration routes in the ‘Russian Photo Blog‘. The photographer spent quite some time with herders that migrat through the Bovanekovo filed and was also allowed access to the contstruction site itself. View all the photos here and the article [...]

One of the largest wind farms in the world is being built in northern Sweden but not everyone is pleased about it. The turbines cut across an area used by Sweden’s indigenous Sámi reindeer herders. An hour’s drive inland from the town of Piteå, a dozen wind turbines tower over the surrounding forest. In the [...]

So said, the Minister for Industry of Norway (Labour Party) while announcing a big increase in funding for mining exploration in the country in a story that appeared in Adressa.no The Norwegian Geological Survey (NGU) believes there is a vast wealth of minerals and ore under the soil just waiting to be exploiting – only [...]

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 [...]

The Canadian mining company Blackstone ventures has managed to buy the rights to start drilling in the Vindelfjällen nature reserve in the north of Sweden. The company is planning to drill right by one of the most ancient Sámi summer villages still inhabited every summer by the reindeer herders and reindeer  of Grans Sameby, the [...]

(Press Release, Saami Council) The Saami people say a mining project in Northeastern Sweden, proposed by a Canadian company, threatens their traditional way of life and violates their basic human rights, as recognized by the United Nations. On 31 August 2009, Blackstone Ventures Inc., a Vancouver-based mining company, announced plans to begin test-drilling for minerals [...]

Al Jazeera is not the first network that springs to mind when thinking of reindeer, but this is an excellent overview of the threats faced by reindeer herding Sami in Sweden, and these are the same threats that reindeer herders and other indigenous peoples practicing traditional livelihoods face elsewhere. You can watch the video here [...]

(Photo J.E. Kalvemo, NRK) The Bessaker wind power station in the Fosen region in the southernmost parts of reindeer husbandry in Norway has just opened and was visited by reindeer herders from Norway and Sweden (in Jamtland and Trondelag) who fear the impact that it will have (there are plans for large expansion) on reindeer [...]

Although on paper, Sami reindeer herders have a statutory right to graze their reindeer over half the surface of Sweden, in practice, industrial activities such as mining, hydropower, logging, infrastructure and the new kid on the block, windpower development culminate in a progressive loss and fragmentation of pastures. There are now 14 wind power parks [...]

(Pic-Philip Burgess). With the coming of summer and the migration of reindeer from Finnmarks’s interior to the coast, the local media has lately been filled with stories about the reinplagen. This translates as ‘reindeer plague’, a disease which sounds deadly, but so far, only reindeer have died as a result. It relates to reindeer grazing in urban and agricultural areas [...]