Climate, habitat and animal production - Reinforcing a northern pastoral production system facing increasing external stress (REINFORCE)

Rapid and pronounced climate change in the Arctic causes distress, challenges and economic uncertainty in the pastoral reindeer herding system of indigenous Sami. Furthermore, competing anthropogenic activities continuously increases and inhibits the flexibility of the system.

Systems based on natural conditions and resources have to cope with environmental variations, but when the amplitude of variations increases and stochastic events occur more often, they can push the system beyond the extreme of what is manageable or into states that has previously not been experienced.

In REINFORCE we will investigate the possibilities and limitations for herders in a northern pastoral system facing increasing external stress to adapt to the effects of climate change.

We will use 25-years records of reindeer numbers and slaughter from the 51 herding communities in Sweden, and a unique 40-year set of records from 20,000 individually marked calves and their mothers collected from one herding community.

Weather events, access to pasture, external land use and herders’ management strategies will be related to reindeer performance and herd productivity over time.

Together with herders we will provide a platform to find flexible management strategies, e.g. discuss a more developed survey system based on individual marking of reindeer.

Flexible strategies are needed to avoid production losses, and instead reinforce reindeer husbandry, when the environment becomes increasingly unpredictable.