Reindeer Blog

(Source: Helsingin Sanomat) In-car satellite navigation systems will start issuing warnings of possible reindeer on Finnish highways. The experiment set to start this autumn relates to a Ministry of Transport and Communications project, the aim of which is to cut the number of reindeer accidents in half. Reindeer may not have the bulk and potentially lethal [...]

Reindeer and caribou numbers are plummeting around the world. The first global review of their status has found that populations are declining almost everywhere they live, from Alaska and Canada, to Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia. The iconic deer is vital to indigenous peoples around the circumpolar north. Yet it is increasingly difficult for the deer [...]

(Pic: Sven Skaltje) This time of year is marked by the birth of reindeer calves around the world of reindeer husbandry. In the North Sámi language, the month of May is called Miessemánnu – which  translates into English as Reindeer Calf Month. This speaks the cycle of  the Sámi year and how intertwined it is into [...]

  В конце прошлой недели в СПК Община «Канин» произошло радостное событие – на свет появился первый олененок – первый предвестник весны. Стада общины «Канин» сейчас откочевывают от мезенских лесов в сторону летовок. Здесь уже тундра начинает просыпаться от зимнего сна. Солнышко делает свое дело: стало тепло и светло. Появились первые проталины, снег стал более [...]

(Pic: Dan Robert Larsen / NRK) Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, The Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues visited a reindeer herd in the company of a reindeer herder from Karasjok, Johan Mathis Eira, among others. She compared the journey to the herd as like travelling in a fridge! Tauli-Corpus has been in Karasjok this [...]

(Source: Russia Today) A large Evenki family, recently awarded with the ‘Parents’ Glory’ award on Tuesday in the Kremlin, decided to present Dmitry Medvedev with one of their reindeer. The Maksimov family’s decision was announced by the representative of the committee on family and childhood affairs for the President of Yakutia. The Maksimovs, who live [...]

The Reindeer Blog reported some months ago that Canada’s only reindeer herd (in Inuvik, in the North West Territories, managed by the Kunnek Resurces Development Corporation) was missing. They obviously have been found, but to earn extra money, their manager, Lloyd Binder (a descendant of the Reindeer Project from the early 20th Century that brought [...]

With the global economic crisis that is hitting peoples on the margins the hardest, the Itgel Foundation, based in the US, which works with Tsataan reindeer herders in Mongolia, has launched a seasonally minded Adopt a Reindeer appeal. They intend to use funds raised to support their ongoing work with reindeer husbandry in Mongolia and [...]

(Sadly) Only at christmas time do reindeer enter the mainstream consciousness, as nicely illustrated by a Google trends search (see Reindeer Portal story). The story of reindeer, Santa Claus and flight is a hybridised mixture of fact, myth and a large dose of 20th Century turbo charged commercialism. On the Reindeer Portal today, you can [...]

Samerna borde ha samma rätt att avliva djur som judar och muslimerna. Det menade advokaten Trond Biti när samisk tradition sattes mot norsk lag igår i högsta domstolen i Norge. Trond Biti menar att muslimer och judar avlivar djuren med knivstick utan att bedöva (SR.se). Sami should have the same right to kill animals as [...]