Sos Reindeer | We care about the Reindeers in Hardangevida.

Who are we?

We are a group of people worried about the threats on the reindeer that lives in the hardangevida national park.

Why S.O.S Reindeer?

Hardangevida national park host the biggest wild reindeer popualtion and its habitat left in the whole europe. Thea real jewels of the norwegian nature is the thing Norway has and no other country in Europe its compared to it. There are some other population spread around Norwegian mountains, but none like the one in Hardangevida.

The population has suffered a constant and steep decline in the last decades due to different factors, but mainly due to habitat loss and sanitary problems.

In short, the habitat of hardangevidda is not very productive in terms of food and the animals need to move around to get enough gracing lands. After all, Reindeer are nomad animals. The national park and areas around, offer a big area but due some factors, the animals don’t get to use it. There are theories that point that the limitation of the area where the animals roam lead to a disease as well. For a long time, the reindeer calves are born undernourished and many don’t survive to the winter, DUCE.

Habitat loss? Which habitat is there?

Hardangevidda national park has ( write number) square km and the potential habitat is even bigger if we take in account the area outside the park ( introduce data). How is that possible?

The answer is in the masification of tourism. Masification is subjetive word and depends on the context, but it does not need to be huge to be damaging the surroundings and when the animal starts being scared of human beings, it is a bad symptom.

Humans are the only animal who predate Reindeer (we talk of hunting, which is used as a management tool). The access to the core park has been facilitated by the presence of tourist cabins that provide everything a hiker needs to go there without carrying any weight. So it’s also easy to cross the reindeer habitat from side to side with a very light backpack since those cabins provide an extensive net of sleeping facilities, with comfortable mattresses, hot meals and even alcoholic beverages.

Consequently, reindeer are trying to avoid the places where they can see or smell humans making this trails, making his habitat, smaller.

Map-of-the-study-area-Hardangervidda-located-in-the-southern-part-of-the-Norwegian

The pastures in the west of the map have been traditionally the calving area chosen by the reindeer till the 90s because of their quality. Lately the animal have ended up changing them for less trafficked by suboptimal areas in the south-east leading to less success. At the same time, the animals are concentrating in a smaller area has led to higher disease ( like the rot foot) spread.

Some voices point that the newest threat to reindeer is the cbd disease (could be aggravated by the crowding of the animals in a smaller area) but this is just a theory that needs further research.

The local cabin owners

Hardangervidda has been traditionally used by the farmers owning farms in the lowlands around the park for at least hundreds of years ( check) . The traditional uses have been the usage of pastures, fishing and hunting. This activities have been compatible with a healthy population of reindeer for long time and somehow the traditional use of hunt of reindeer as a natural source of meat is threatened due to lately reindeer population decline. Hunt is regulated ans controlled in a way it does not become a threat, experts in reindeer and other authorities decide the amount of hunting cards given in a way hunt does not pose a threat.

With the introduction of snowmobile there has been a spike on local traffic in the park in last 40 years or so (Check) but there is studies ( LINK) pointing that the local traffic accounts only for the 5% of the total traffic in the park. Locals receive information about the gps located animals to avoid unnecessary interaction with the wild animals during the sensible times like winter. Locals also gett a cuota of mechanized trips to avoid overcrowding the park.

There are two attitudes regarding to the rein deer issue in the local cabin users. In one side there are people raising voice and pointing to the overcrowding due to tourism of the park as the reason behind reindeer.

In the other side there are local people worried about having their rights limited if they raise their voices against the massification of the park and airing the problem, particularly they are worried about pointing this big elephant in the room, tourism indeed. There even people worried about represalies against them if they face the hand behind this massification DNT ( of course this is a perceived risk and we are not pointing here DNT as a vengeful entity ready to crash the locals in case of resistance, but the fear, justified or not exists in some circles.)