Abstract
Reindeer husbandry in northern Sweden, Norway, and Finland is an extensive agroforestry system, and the management of reindeer occurs alongside other land uses such as forestry, hunting, and tourism. The economic, social, and environmental impact of using GPS collars to track the reindeer was evaluated in the Sami village of Njaarke in boreal Sweden. A second objective was to evaluate how adapted forest management influenced reindeer husbandry. The results show that the use of GPS tracking enables the improved monitoring of the reindeer but the financial costs were greater than the financial benefits. The increased income did not cover the costs of depreciation and maintenance. Whilst the labour inputs associated with reindeer husbandry were high, 30–40% of the gross value added by village activities were related to hunting, tourism, and the renting of fishing rights. The use of adaptive forest management was assumed to increase the number of reindeer that could be reared through to slaughter and it was calculated to increase the gross value added by reindeer husbandry by more than 30%.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support from Daana Fjellberg and Per Nilsson, Njaarke Sami Village, Björn Skogh, the forest owner association Norrskog, Swedish Association of Swedish Sami, SCA, and Diana Tuomasjukka and personnel at the European Forest Institute, Finland. We also gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments from Dr. Paul Burgess, and two anonymous reviewers. The work was funded by the European Union through the AGFORWARD Project (Contract No: 613520).
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Valinger, E., Berg, S. & Lind, T. Reindeer husbandry in a mountain Sami village in boreal Sweden: the social and economic effect of introducing GPS collars and adaptive forest management. Agroforest Syst 92, 933–943 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-018-0249-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-018-0249-z