AUGUST 6,
2019
by Ilona
Kater, The
Conversation
Reindeer
are incredibly hardy creatures—they survived the last Ice Age and today live in
some of the world's most inhospitable landscapes. Despite their fine-tuned
adaptations to life in the Arctic and after over
600,000 years of living there, reindeer are struggling to
survive the rapid changes happening all around them.
In the
winter of 2013-14, 61,000
reindeer starved to death in the Yamal peninsula of Russia. The
population crashed, devastating the Yamal Nenets—an indigenous people who herd
the reindeer for
food. A more recent census found that 200
reindeer in Svalbard, Norway didn't survive the winter
of 2018-19.
These
mass starvations were largely due to climate change, which is causing
unusual spikes of
warm winter weather in the Arctic. The higher winter
temperatures cause snow to melt and refreeze, or to fall as rain which also
refreezes. The icy sheet encases lichen on the ground—the reindeers' main winter
food supply. The reindeer can't dig through it and often the ice freezes over
such a large area that they starve while wandering, trying to reach the plants
they can smell beneath them.
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