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An Alaska-based association involved in Reindeer management

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Welcome to Reindeer Farmers Association!

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Welcome to Reindeer Farmers Association!

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As this is a widely cultivated species, the management strategies often simply fall into the hands of those who choose to own them. There are various organizations and associations (tribal, private, and state sponsored) that exist for the betterment of individuals whose livelihood depends on reindeer herding/farming. Some regions of the world have been control over the animals abundance, whereas others require culls to prevent harm to the ecosystem. Farmers typically own enough reindeer to harvest velvet antlers and meat from.

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Controlling Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)

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Controlling Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)

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Another cull was ordered to take place on a small population (~2,000 individuals) in Norway after the discovery of some reindeer being carriers of CWD. It appears from my literature and media searches that a common management method is to remove large numbers of individuals from the ecosystem.

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An extraordinary number of reindeer were targeted for a planned cull after a warming climate brought Anthrax to the forefront of wildlife management in the region. In addition to the spread of disease, the historical population of between 300-400k reindeer has almost doubled since the fall of the USSR, and the cull was intended to mitigate the overabundant population from negatively impacting other ecological processes.

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Equally there are fears the cull could destroy age-old reindeer nomadic herding in Yamal. Picture: YSIA

Officials are demanding a huge reduction in reindeer numbers on the Yamal Peninsula and the rest of Yamalo-Nenets region.

One proposed scheme would see nomadic herders who give up their reindeer for the cull to be rewarded not in cash but with affordable mortgages to buy apartments.

Equally there are fears the cull could destroy age-old reindeer nomadic herding in Yamal - a name which means 'the end of the earth'. Governor Dmitry Kobylkin has demanded a viable plan by the end of September to reduce the number of reindeer by a quarter of a million.

Traditionally the slaughtering season is November and December, and while details are not yet agreed, the number of reindeer to be culled is expected to be massively increased.

'In Soviet times the livestock in Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region was kept at the number of 300,000-to-400,000 heads. Now there are 700,000 already.' Pictures: The Siberian Times, Georgy Shpikalov

The usual method of slaughter is an electric shock to the forehead immobilising the animal from the high voltage charge. It is then slung upside down on a hanging line, where its antlers are removed.

The throat is slit, and blood is drained from the animal, and can be exported, especially to China, where it has traditional medicinal uses. The proposal for a major cull follows two traumatic events to hit reindeer herds in Yamelo-Nenets in recent years.

Freak warm weather followed by a freeze in winter 2013-14 caused an ice-over of pastures which led to the deaths of some 70,000 reindeer in a famine. This summer, there was an outbreak of deadly anthrax after the hottest Arctic summer on record.

The throat is slit, and blood is drained from the animal, and can be exported, especially to China, where it has traditional medicinal uses. Pictures: Yamal Reindeer, Vesti.Yamal

The 'zombie' disease frozen seven or more decades ago was awakened in the thawing permafrost, leading to the death of a boy, and 2,349 reindeer, plus at least four dogs. There were three separate outbreaks, but now there are warnings that large herd numbers can lead new cases of infection to rapidly spread.

'Reindeer livestock numbers in Yamal are too high,' said Nikolai Vlasov, deputy head of Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia's Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Service.

'The more dense the animal population is, the worse the disease transfer medium (and) the more often animals get sick. Density of livestock, especially in the tundra areas that are very fragile, should be regulated.'

He called for scientifically-calculated targets based on what can be sustained on pastures. Reindeer limits should not be exceeded. 'The number of animals should not surpass this,' he said.

'Otherwise, they will kill the pastures and later will destroy the indigenous minorities of the North who will have nothing to live on. It is impossible to breed reindeers without limits.'

This summer, there was an outbreak of deadly anthrax after the hottest Arctic summer on record. Pictures: Vesti.Yamal, YANAO press-service

He said Yamal was 'reaching a dangerous milestone'. 'I base my conclusions on Soviet standards,' he said. 'Back then livestock was kept at the same number, 300,000-to-400,000 heads. Now there are 700,000 already.'

The governor has suggested moving to the system in Finland of fenced pastures. 'Artificial food has its advantages and disadvantages, but in terms of purity of meat, timely vaccination and reindeer health, obviously, there are more advantages,' he said.

He has also proposed moving huge numbers of reindeer to southern regions of Yamelo-Nenets - an area substantially larger than France in size - to allow the recovery of northern pastures.

On the overgrazed peninsula - which is also home to Russia's largest supply of natural gas - there is sufficient food for 110,000 reindeer, he said. But there are now 300,000 animals in this part of the region.

Governor Dmitry Kobylkin has demanded a viable plan by the end of September to reduce the number of reindeer by a quarter of a million. Picture: YANAO press-service

Anthropologist Olga Murashko has expressed concerns about the proposals. 'I am very worried about the fate of the private herders, who still perpetuate the tradition of family and clan based reindeer herding,' she said. 'Most of them have small herds of about a hundred deer.'

A speeding up of gas licensing also troubles her. 'The coincidence of this news on plans - to urgently reduce the reindeer population in Yamal by over one third with the rapid issuing of licenses for gas extraction in the same region - causes the greatest concern over the fate of the reindeer herders,' she said.

They nomadic groups sustained their way of life through the Soviet era but now it was under threat, she said. 'A huge number of nomads on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas will lose their means of existence and opportunities to maintain their traditional way of life.

'Additionally, it is clear that within the short time frame given, the indigenous reindeer herders cannot be properly consulted on the administration's plans to annihilate a large number of reindeer.'

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Huge cull of 250,000 reindeer by Christmas in Yamalo-Nenets after anthrax outbreak

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Equally there are fears the cull could destroy age-old reindeer nomadic herding in Yamal. Picture: YSIA Officials are demanding a huge reduction in reindeer numbers on the Yamal Peninsula and the rest of Yamalo-Nenets region. One proposed scheme would see nomadic herders who give up their reindeer for the cull to be rewarded not in cash but with affordable mortgages to buy apartments.

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Ecological Impact II - Ecosystem Engineer

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Ecological Impact II - Ecosystem Engineer

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Due to the herding tendencies of this species and being the main herbivore in most Arctic regions, Reindeer are known to disrupt plant communities in a variety of ways. First, they place a mechanical pressure on vegetation by grazing and trampling, and secondly, their feces contribute to an increase in Nitrogen concentration.

High densities of reindeer are believed to decrease plant diversity and have an overall browning of the environment, as seen by satellite imagery. Foraging behavior mainly impacted areas of low vegetation and was less likely to impact already established, taller plant species.

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An amazing visual of these animals on the move. It really helps visualizing the movements of large herds

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Follow Thousands of Reindeer on an Epic Journey

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Close-to-Home Conservation Effort to Save Endangered Subspecies

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Close-to-Home Conservation Effort to Save Endangered Subspecies

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In 2014, extreme cold encased Lake Superior almost entirely in ice. Wolves ambled across new ice bridges to Michipicoten Island and the Slate Islands, which together held a population of around 1,000 caribou. By 2018, the wolves had whittled the herds to just 15 on Michipicoten and two on the Slates, both males. Prodded by wildlife advocates to do something, the Ontario government conducted emergency airlifts that winter to save the Michipicoten caribou and restart modest herds on the Slates, from which wolves by then had vanished, and on smaller, farther-from-shore Caribou Island.

Wolves may have been the immediate cause of death, but it was generations of logging, mining, and industrial development that have pushed Lake Superior's caribou to the brink of extirpation. Climate change is also a factor. Ice bridges were once more common, allowing both caribou and predators to move fluidly between islands and the coast. But warming temperatures have driven a decline in Superior's ice cover, isolating herds and making them more vulnerable.

Today the entire population sits at maybe 60 animals, says Gord Eason, a retired Ontario government biologist. That tally includes around 30 caribou on the Slate Islands. It includes a herd of about 20 that, if it grows much, could easily outstrip Caribou Island's food supply and starve. And it includes Eason's generous estimate of around 10 animals along the coast; it's been more than four years since aerial winter surveys turned up evidence of caribou on the mainland. He and others now suspect that caribou sign reported in earlier surveys may in fact have been from whitetail deer.

Eason and an informal coalition of scientists, Indigenous leaders, and citizen-advocates say they're deeply concerned about what will happen if Superior freezes over again this winter. The Ontario government was too slow to intervene in 2018, they say. And Premier Doug Ford's government, which took office a few months after the airlifts, has been an adamant supporter of the very industries that degrade caribou habitat. "We are very concerned that the Ontario government would not act in time, if at all," Eason says. "If we lose the population around Lake Superior, then the next-furthest-north caribou become the southern end of the range. Then a little group of them will become isolated somehow, and they'll disappear. It just keeps going and going. That is the process of extinction."

The animals around Lake Superior are boreal woodland caribou-a subspecies of Rangifer tarandus, which includes reindeer, barren-ground caribou that roam the Arctic tundra, and woodland caribou in the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia. They were never very abundant-their survival strategy in boreal forests is to avoid predators by being scarce-but thousands of them once slunk through the region's dense woods, hidden bogs, and rocky islands. In the 1800s, however, loggers began cutting old-growth forests laden with lichens that caribou like to eat, replacing them with brushy young woods better suited to moose and whitetail deer. This abundant new prey attracted more wolves, which used roads and other manmade corridors to more efficiently hunt moose, deer, and caribou alike. The deer also brought with them a parasitic brainworm harmless to them but lethal to caribou. By the late 1800s, industrial development had opened up a gap that now stretches 60 or 70 miles between the Lake Superior caribou and herds to the north. Today caribou are present only fleetingly if at all in this range, bureaucratically known as the "discontinuous distribution."

Boreal caribou once ranged across Canada from Labrador to the Yukon Territory and as far south as Maine, Michigan, and other northern states. But they have lost roughly half of that range in the past 150 years, their territory receding northward with encroaching development. The last herd in the contiguous United States-the South Selkirk herd of mountain woodland caribou, in northern Idaho and Washington State-winked out in 2018. In Canada, only 14 out of 51 boreal herds are self-sustaining. They are considered threatened under Canada's Species at Risk Act and Ontario's Endangered Species Act.

Advocates for Lake Superior's caribou say what's needed is to rebuild a big enough herd on Michipicoten Island to withstand some predation and buy time for another intervention, should wolves return. A successful translocation to Michipicoten would preserve and grow a genetic pool from which to restore the mainland herds. Doing nothing could bring a swift end to a population.

Ontario's 2009 caribou conservation plan made it provincial policy to rebuild connections between the northern herds and the isolated Lake Superior population by protecting certain landscapes within the discontinuous distribution. Before industrial development severed those linkages, natural intermingling would have allowed northern caribou to occasionally mix with the herds along the coast and help rebuild the population when its numbers dwindled, according to Brian McLaren, an ecologist at Lakehead University. "That was probably never a discontinuous range, and it was always important to their persistence," he says. With so few caribou left along Superior, "it's even more important now." While building up a herd on Michipicoten Island is the immediate priority, there's no time to delay with that longer-term project, he says. "If you're not going to start building corridors with slow-growing boreal forest now, you're not going to get them in 20 or 30 years."

But at the moment, it's not clear whether Ontario plans to reconnect the herds at all. Just after the emergency rescue in 2018, the provincial government invited the public to help shape a new policy for managing caribou around Lake Superior and in the discontinuous distribution. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry asked the public for feedback on four possible management approaches: restore caribou on the Lake Superior mainland and islands and reconnect them with the northern herds; rebuild herds on Superior's mainland and islands but forget the northern connections; keep them on the islands but don't worry about the mainland; or do nothing.

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation, and Parks, which oversees caribou management after a recent reshuffling of the provincial cabinet, did not respond to questions by press time. But a July 7 email from the ministry to caribou advocates suggests that the government has abandoned its earlier goal of reconnecting the Lake Superior population to the northern herds. "The ministry continues to focus efforts on monitoring and securing the island caribou populations, specifically the Slate Islands population," wrote Hilary Gignac, a manager in MECP's Species at Risk Branch, in response to an email from Eason and others urging the province to return caribou to Michipicoten Island and the mainland. "We also continue to explore management approaches for caribou in the Lake Superior Coast Range, with the interests you have shared being taken into consideration, along with all other feedback and perspectives we have received." Eason says the response indicates that the province has already chosen the islands-only, third option for managing the Superior herds.

To critics, it's more evidence that Ford's government is focused too much on supporting industry and not enough on protecting the environment-a view supported by a 2020 report from the province's auditor general. Under Ford, Ontario has moved boost mining by cutting red tape and "by sending swat teams into projects that are ready to move to a major milestone," in the words of Greg Rickford, the provincial minister of northern development, mines, natural resources, and forestry. The government has also laid out a plan to double Ontario's logging output over the next decade, and last December used a pandemic recovery bill to permanently exempt logging from provincial endangered species law.

"They don't care what the ramifications might be," says Chief Patricia Tangie of the Michipicoten First Nation, who has played a primary role in the efforts to save Lake Superior's caribou. "They're not interested in environmental integrity. What they're doing is totally unsustainable, and I tell them this all the time."

Tangie says she and others in her Ojibwe community on Superior's northeast coast feel a profound duty to ensure the continued survival of caribou, which sustained their ancestors until just a few generations ago. "We have to take our responsibility seriously, the responsibility Creator gave us at the beginning of time," she says.

Hopefully the advocacy that she, Eason, and others are so invested in will lead to a future in which Lake Superior's caribou again have the habitat they need to thrive, Tangie says. She envisions a day when caribou become plentiful enough to provide her people with sustenance once more. "Food is medicine," she says. "Maybe my great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren might know what it's like to have the strength of the caribou within our bodies."

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The Fight to Save Lake Superior's Last Caribou

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In 2014, extreme cold encased Lake Superior almost entirely in ice. Wolves ambled across new ice bridges to Michipicoten Island and the Slate Islands, which together held a population of around 1,000 caribou. By 2018, the wolves had whittled the herds to just 15 on Michipicoten and two on the Slates, both males.

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“A white reindeer created the world. The reindeer’s veins became rivers, its fur became forest, its stomach became the ocean, and its horns became mountains.” -Risten Lango, Norwegian Reindeer Herder

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Strange case of controversy among Norway and an Indigenous Reindeer Herder

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Strange case of controversy among Norway and an Indigenous Reindeer Herder

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The Norwegian Government was sued due to their "reindeer reduction policy", which was implemented to control the overpopulated herd's impact on the environment. A display of 400 reindeer skulls were hung outside a parliament building in protest.

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Four hundred reindeer skulls hanging in front of the Parliament building in Oslo on Tuesday. Credit... Gorm Kallestad/European Pressphoto Agency

OSLO - On a winter-wonderland Wednesday in Oslo, as ice skaters held hands and rosy-cheeked toddlers lined up for rides on a merry-go-round and Ferris wheel, hundreds of bullet-ridden reindeer skulls were strung up yards away in a macabre curtain outside the Stortinget, Norway's Parliament.

The reindeer heads had been installed as a protest in a Supreme Court case brought by Jovsset Ante Sara, 25, an indigenous Sami herder who is challenging the Norwegian government's reindeer reduction policy. Mr. Sara has won two court victories, but each time the government has appealed.

"It's a shame and a pity that you have to drag along 400 heads around the world to get the word out there about our reality, to find a voice," said Marat Anne Sara, Mr. Sara's older sister and the artist and activist behind the grisly curtain of skulls, which she describes as artwork and hung up on Tuesday and Wednesday. "We have to fight so hard to get a place in people's consciousness."

Norway's Sami minority is best known for its traditional practice of reindeer husbandry. The country's laws require Mr. Sara, as with other reindeer herders across Norway's High North, to kill a percentage of his herd of 116 as part of the government's reindeer-reduction policy.

He has argued that the policy is an infringement of indigenous rights, and that because his herd is already tiny, additional culling would make it impossible for him to sustain himself or his family.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food would not comment because the case is not resolved. But the government's stated rationale for the culling is to prevent overgrazing of the tundra landscapes to and from where reindeers are herded. General estimates for Norway's total reindeer population are around 220,000.

Tor A. Benjaminsen, a professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, wrote in a letter published on the website of the state broadcaster NRK last spring that the reduction policy was arrogant and not based on knowledge.

He said that the government "does not understand reindeer herding" and that the policy of culling and levying "fines for those who breach the policy could collapse if the government loses the case."

Nicholas Tyler, a British biologist and mammal ecologist who studies Norway's wild and domesticated reindeer at UIT, the Arctic University of Norway, was skeptical of the government's position.

"There is a lot of talk of 'overgrazing,' but it is rarely rigorously defined what overgrazing actually is in a pastoral context," Dr. Tyler said, noting that pastures are constantly changing and renewing.

"The Sami herders feel like they are being squashed in physically - by roads, dams, mines, railroads, wind farms," he said, "Then they are told they are the unsustainable ones."

Dr. Tyler said that the state's regulation of grazing systems could be described as internal "welfare colonialism," the anthropologist Robert Paine's term that denotes an exchange of dependency, in this case, subsidies in return for stricter government controls.

He described the case as a tense, essential debate over what should take precedence in Norway: indigenous rights, including that to an ancestral livelihood, or ecological biodiversity and general environmental rights.

A representative of the attorney general's office said in a phone call that the government was pursuing the case as a matter of principle: "It's about whether or not the law is to be interpreted literally or not."

The lawyer arguing the government's case, Stein-Erik Jahr Dahl, said in his closing statement, "The right to herd reindeer does not give Sara a right to a certain number of reindeer, nor a right to keep sufficient reindeer to have a financial return or to pursue reindeer herding as a full-time job."

He also said that the government's main objective of "proportionate reduction" was to ensure that the herd was brought down to "an ecological, economically and culturally sustainable level as well as to ensure sound animal welfare."

The Arctic-dwelling Sami are indigenous to northern Norway and to chillier parts of Russia, Finland and Sweden. There is no census on how many reside in Norway; estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000. The Sami have their own Parliament and president, but both are largely symbolic, with no veto power.

The Sami's forced assimilation into wider Norwegian society until the 1960s, when indigenous people were granted language rights, is still viewed with resentment. Some Sami say forced assimilation continues, just in more subtle ways.

In recent years, improved relations between the Sami and other Norwegians have eroded since the emergence of the right-wing Progress Party, which has taken a harder line on minorities in Norway in response to higher levels of migration to this nation of just over five million people.

Standing beneath the curtain of reindeer skulls, the Sami president, Aili Keskitalo, called Mr. Sara's trial "a symbol" of the Sami people's plight.

There have been other court cases involving the reindeer-reduction policy, but this one is significant, some legal experts say, because it could lead to the policy's overturning.

When Mr. Sara took his case first to the Inner Finnmark District Court in 2016, his sister showed up at the courthouse steps with a truck and dumped onto the snow a much more gory version of her artwork: a mountain of still-bloody reindeer heads with a Norwegian flag planted atop.

Mr. Sara won that case and then another, which brought it to the Supreme Court. Final arguments were on Wednesday, and a decision is expected in early January.

When not in court, Mr. Sara, who is from Kautokeino, a cultural capital of the Sami, moves with the herd. On Wednesday, he was inside the court while other family members tended to his reindeer, which were about 150 miles from Hammerfest, bound for the Bavttajohka river, midway along their migration trail.

"It is my responsibility to carry on our heritage," he said by phone when asked why he continued to pursue the case. "Right now, we don't get to decide over our own lives."

Were he not a herder, he said, he would be at a loss as to what to do to earn a living. "All I know is reindeer herding," he said. "That's been all my life."

Under Norway's current policy, his herd may be reduced to 75. Could he survive with so few reindeer?

"Absolutely not," he said.

Standing next to her skulls in Oslo on Wednesday, his sister said: "My hope in the legal system is fading. We have a saying in the Sami language, 'You can't beat the troll with its own tricks.'"

The skulls came from a slaughter house near Kautokeino, she said, and the bullet holes were "an example of Western colonization."

Ms. Sara spoke as vendors sold mulled wine from snow-covered wooden cabins, and talking moose heads greeted tourists here with "Merry Christmas." Her hanging reindeer showed various stages of decomposition, their shades of yellow matching both the austere brickwork of the Stortinget and the stripes of the Sami flag.

"The energy is still here with these heads," Ms. Sara said, looking up at the skulls. "They are dead and alive, all at once."

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In Norway, Fighting the Culling of Reindeer With a Macabre Display (Published 2017)

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OSLO - On a winter-wonderland Wednesday in Oslo, as ice skaters held hands and rosy-cheeked toddlers lined up for rides on a merry-go-round and Ferris wheel, hundreds of bullet-ridden reindeer skulls were strung up yards away in a macabre curtain outside the Stortinget, Norway's Parliament.

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Recent Scholarly Publications of Interest

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Recent Scholarly Publications of Interest

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1. Tattersall, Erin R., et al. Mammal Seismic Line Use Varies with Restoration: Applying Habitat Restoration to Species at Risk Conservation in a Working Landscape. Biological Conservation, Elsevier, 20 Nov. 2019, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320719307013.

This paper analyzes the impacts of habitat remediation and its often overstatements of success in boosting mammal populations, particular regarding caribou.

2. Mysterud, A., Edmunds, D.R. A review of chronic wasting disease in North America with implications for Europe. Eur J Wildl Res 65, 26 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-019-1260-z

The infamous Chronic Wasting Disease which has horrifically impacted populations of cervidae in North America has had its first documented case in Norway. The carrier was a female Reindeer and since its initial discovery abroad, a number of other individuals have been confirmed to be afflicted with the illness over the last few years.

3. Sundqvist, MK, Moen, J, Björk, RG, et al. Experimental evidence of the long-term effects of reindeer on Arctic vegetation greenness and species richness at a larger landscape scale. J Ecol. 2019; 107: 2724– 2736. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13201

This 2019 publication looks at the ecological impact reindeer have on the on the tundra landscape. It is interesting because they looked at the impacts of climate change in these vulnerable areas and whether or not reindeer presence has a long-term impact.

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Dubbed a "Reindeer Cyclone" -- this is a defensive maneuver in the presence of a predators 

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Various indigenous groups have deep cultural roots involving reindeer, with a 2000-3000 year history of domestication. These respected creatures are utilized for many purposes; such as for meat, milk, hides, in trade, and for sport.

A nomadic group native to Russia's most northern region, called the Nenets, have affectionately referred to themselves as the "Children of the Reindeer".

The Alaskan Yup'ik, an Indigenous group that has inhabited the region for millennia, has used caribou as a part of their traditional clothing for 3,000 to 8,000 years.

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Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are a widespread, large herbivore that is a member of the Cervidae (deer) family. Known as Reindeer in Asia & Europe, they are called Caribou in their North American range; though these names are generally interchangeable and will be used as such throughout this padlet. They are the only species of deer that are widely semi (or fully) domesticated. These animals play an important role in the food chain, countless indigenous cultures, and their ecosystem.

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System currently lists 14 subspecies among their records.

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Here's an artist's depiction of Santa and his reindeer.

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Often colloquially associated with the mythological character of Santa Claus, a hefty and jolly man that delivers gifts to the children of the world, reindeer are commonly referenced as assisting him in his yearly journey. The first reference of reindeer in Santa Claus' story was in 1821.

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IUCN (2015) - Vulnerable (Declining)

The IUCN estimates that there are currently ~2.9 million mature individuals

US Endangered Species Act - Endangered

Applicable only to 'Woodland Caribou' subspecies (Rangifer tarandus caribou)

Canada Species-At-Risk Act - Varied

Woodland Caribou are classified as Endangered, Threatened, Special Concern, or No Concern depending on the region

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The geographic range of Reindeer populations spans across various national borders. Canada, China, Finland, Greenland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States (Alaska; possibly Washington and Idaho) are known to have extant populations.

Historically, US states that once supported caribou populations include: Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin (USFWS, n.d.).

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As previously mentioned, these animals are widely domesticated throughout much of their geographic distribution. And wild herds readily congregate together in massive numbers, with the largest herd being found in Russia -- a conservative estimate places the number belonging to this herd at 400,000 individuals.

During the winter season, herds will migrate south in order to survive in less harsh conditions. The journey caribou take has been documented being anywhere from 600-1000 miles. Though not all subspecies migrate great distances. Caribou are said to have the longest migration of any land mammal.

Males are polygamous and will mate with >10 females within a given season. The social hierarchy of male reindeer is determined by two factors, age and size.

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Ecological Impact I - Role in the Food Web

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Ecological Impact I - Role in the Food Web

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R. tarandus are 'Primary Consumers' by controlling plant communities through the means of top-down pressures. They additionally can limit 'Secondary Consumers (wolves, bears, tigers, etc.)' through bottom-up trophic effects. The intermediate ranking that these animals play on the ecosystem has an extremely important interaction towards other species, and depending on their local [over/under]abundance, can either have positive or negative impacts on the system as a whole.

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As a prime example of a grazer, an average adult reindeer consumes between 9-18lbs (4-8kg) of food per day. These animals will consume a wide variety of plant life and fungi in their environment. Such items may include ferns, grasses, mosses, shrubs, tree leaves, lichen, and fungi.

During the winter, mega-herds can overgraze tundras of lichen (which makes up 40%+ of their diet during the season). Mixed opinions exist on whether these impacts are beneficial or detrimental on local communities. Lichen mats are extremely flammable, and some experts believe that overgrazing may prevent wildfires from becoming too intense and widespread. Climate change has caused an unnatural increase in wildfires, resulting in undesirable habitat for caribou (Mallory and Boyce 2017).