High-tech satellite telemetry improves reindeer management on Alaska's vast rangelands.

R eindeer are an important livestock species in the circumpolar north. Currently there are approximately three to four million reindeer distributed across Russia, Scandinavia, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, and Alaska, with five hundred thousand animals slaughtered annually, producing over 20,000 metric tons of meat (Turi, 1998). In Alaska, the majority of commercially produced reindeer occurs on the Seward Peninsula and Bering Sea Islands. Currently on the Seward Peninsula (the largest contiguous grazing area in the state), 14 herds graze on 16,200,000 acres of available rangeland with individual range permit areas averaging 1,012,500 acres (Workman et al. 1991). These permitted grazing ranges are remote, bisected by large rivers and mountain ranges with few or no roads. Herders employ an extensive management scheme where reindeer are allowed to range freely. Most herders utilize boat, ATV, or foot travel to monitor and move their herds. This type of management is characterized by sporadic herder contact that often results in the herd being unsupervised for extended periods when overland travel is difficult, or during mechanical breakdown of all-terrain vehicles. Herders will often lose track of their animals and must extensively search for them when traveling conditions improve. Many animals, especially those co-mingling and migrating with the Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH), may leave permitted grazing areas and are permanently lost to the herder. Unsupervised grazing reindeer may not optimize use of range resources or may overgraze the range. For these reasons it is critical for reindeer herders to adopt new technology allowing year round monitoring of animal locations and evaluation of annual grazing patterns. During the past 25 years, Natural Resources Conservation Service and University of Alaska Reindeer Research Program have assisted Northwest and Western Alaska reindeer herders with range management and animal husbandry technology. Range assistance has centered on traditional inventories, ecological site mapping, similarity (condition), trend, and utilization assessments. Annually, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource specialists coordinate with NRCS to conduct range assessments with reindeer herders during the summer. These inventories have provided the baseline information for range conservation planning and management.

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