Mass starvation of reindeer linked to climate change and habitat loss

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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When the extreme becomes the norm for Arctic animals

APRIL 8, 2019

by Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Think of reindeer on Norway's Svalbard archipelago as the arctic equivalent of sloths. It's not a perfect analogy, except that like tropical sloths, Svalbard reindeer move as little as possible to conserve energy.

This, combined with the fact that they don't have any predators, allows them to stay in the same area year-round, nibbling on the grasses, herbs and sedges they can find. When snow comes, they simply paw it away and keep nibbling. It's a lifestyle that has allowed Svalbard reindeer to persist over the millennia, long enough for them to adapt physiologically and evolve into a separate subspecies.

But over the last few decades, the warming climate has brought more rain and less snow in some winters. These rain-on-snow (ROS) events can cause ice to form on the ground. The ice coats the reindeer's preferred food and causes them to starve— a potential catastrophe.

In a study just published in Nature Communications, researcher Brage Bremset Hansen, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics (CBD) and colleagues describe how they modeled the effects on reindeer population dynamics if icing becomes the norm, rather than an extreme event.

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Are Santa's Reindeer Males?

By Live Science Staff | December 18, 2017 01:06pm ET

Impossible, scientists say.

Here's why: Here on the ground, male reindeer shed their antlers at the end of the mating season in early December, while females sport their thinner antlers throughout the winter. 

Sounds like Rudolph and the gang were all gals. 

"It appears that way," said physiologist Perry Barboza of the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska at Fairbanks, who studies reindeer and their closest cousins, caribou. Scientists consider reindeer and caribou the same species.

Santa, turns out, did some savvy hiring of his prancing parade. These antlered deer (Rangifer tarandus) are used to the cold. They live in Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia, where they graze on tundra plants. So, even though pudgy Santa must bundle himself beneath a red-velvet suit, sleigh-pulling reindeer are naturally covered with hollow hairs that trap in air and keep them well-insulated. Plus, their circulatory systems keep the cooler blood in the reindeer's limbs from drawing heat from the warm blood in their core body.

While all reindeer would be equipped for an Arctic journey, though a flightless one, females might have the edge over their male counterparts.

Read on 

More than 100 reindeer killed by freight trains in Norway 'bloodbath'

Sixty-five animals died on railway track on Saturday while further 41 killed last week during winter migration

Agence France-Presse in Oslo

Monday 27 November 2017 10.37 GMTLast modified on Monday 27 November 2017 23.12 GMT

More than 100 reindeer have been killed by freight trains in northern Norway in the past days in what has been called a senseless tragedy.

One train killed 65 deer on a track on Saturday while 41 died between Wednesday and Friday, the public broadcaster NRK reported late on Sunday.

“I’m so angry that I’m dizzy,” the owner of the 65 dead reindeer, Ole Henrik Kappfjell, told NRK. “It’s a senseless animal tragedy … a psychological nightmare.”

Norway is home to about 250,000 semi-domestic reindeer and most of them live in the far north of the country. At this time of year, herders take the reindeer to the winter pastures in search of grazing grounds, a perilous journey as many animals are hit by cars and trains. Some also drown.

Photos taken by the documentary filmmaker Jon Erling Utsi showed dead reindeer lying in the blood-stained snow. Some were shot after they were left wounded in Saturday’s incident. “It was a nightmare to watch,” he told NRK.

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Santa's Reindeer Feel the Heat as Numbers Shrink Worldwide

By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | December 12, 2016 05:11pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Santa Claus better stock up on reindeer, because he may have trouble scrounging up replacements in the not-too-distant future, new research suggests.

Reindeer populations in northern Russia are falling, according to a new study. The new findings dovetail with other research showing that reindeer populations are falling in other parts of the Arctic as well.

But Santa's trusty steeds aren't the only iconic wintry beasts facing worldwide declines. Polar bear populations could decline by about one-third over the next 30 or 40 years based on sea ice estimates, another study found. 

And hotter, drier conditions in the western U.S. could mean steep reductions in mountain lion and mule deer populations.

Worldwide changes

For a while now, scientists have documented many changes in the Arctic that suggest trouble is brewing.

"The reindeer population in the world, and caribou, are declining pretty rapidly," study co-author Andrey Petrov, a geographer at the University of Northern Iowa, said here today (Dec. 12) at a news briefing at the annual American Geophysical Union Meeting. "We don't know why it's happening."

To get a better understanding of why, Petrov looked at reindeer populations in the Taimyr Peninsula in Far North Russia. The Taimyr reindeer population, at 600,000 animals, makes up 24 percent of the global reindeer population. The population peaked in 2000 at more than 1 million creatures, after the dismantling of the Soviet management system led to dramatic reductions in hunting. However, since then the population has been falling.

Petrov used satellite views of the region's vegetation, along with the vegetation and the corresponding presence of reindeer. The herds of reindeer are clearly visible in land satellite imagery, which allowed Petrov to map reindeer movement across the Arctic during the winter, their spring calving season and summer. He found that, overall, the reindeer have a strong tendency to return to the same places over and over again.

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Reindeer to be culled in Russia’s far north due to anthrax outbreak

Governor of the Yamal-Nenets region confirms cull after melting permafrost awakens ‘zombie infection’

Alec Luhn in Moscow

Sunday 9 October 2016 19.31 BST Last modified on Monday 10 October 2016 01.07 BST

 

A governor in Russia’s far north has said the reindeer population will be reduced by 100,000 after an anthrax outbreak, but scientists have said twice as many need to be culled.

Reindeer herding is an important industry and livelihood for indigenous peoples in the Yamal-Nenets region. Its governor, Dmitry Kobylkin, told state news agency RIA Novosti that about 100,000 reindeer would be culled this winter because overpopulation was straining a limited food supply and increasing the risk of anthrax infection.

 
An outbreak in Yamal-Nenets – the first since 1941 – killed a 12-year-old boy and more than 2,500 reindeer in July and August. Scientists and officials blamed the awakening of the “zombie infection” on abnormally hot temperatures caused by global climate change. 

Thawing of the permafrost soil can release the frozen bacteria.

“For [lack of fodder], some herder families take their animals to graze in restricted areas where there’s a high risk of Siberian plague infection,” Kobylkin said, using the Russian name for anthrax, a bacterial infection often transmitted through contaminated food or water.

Regional authorities will buy the reindeer to be culled and process the meat, he said. Officials have said reindeer meat exports could increase from 300 tonnes last year to 800 tonnes this year.

More than 750,000 reindeer live in the Yamal-Nenets region, even though the region’s pasture land can support only 386,000 reindeer without degrading, Vladimir Bogdanov, director of the Urals Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta. At least 200,000 reindeer need to be culled, he said.

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