Human and animal mobility lies at the core of any nomadic pastoralist system. Anthropological studies of migratory patterns of mobile pastoralists’ movements have revealed two universal sets of factors—ecological and non-ecological—that... more
Human and animal mobility lies at the core of any nomadic pastoralist system. Anthropological studies of migratory patterns of mobile pastoralists’ movements have revealed two universal sets of factors—ecological and non-ecological—that influence such movements differently. Our study focuses on the nomadic movement of the Yamal Nenets reindeer herders in the Russian Arctic using a microregional approach to study the indigenous communities on a large scale. The Nenets households of the Mordyyakha microregion in the northwest of the Yamal Peninsula have changed winter pasture sites several times over the past 15–20 years, while maintaining a stable summer route. Based on fieldwork among these people, we analyse how environmental and non-environmental factors influence the dynamics of their summer and winter meridional nomadic routes. We argue that long-term changes in their winter mobility are mainly related to the quality of pastures. Changing winter sites is a strategy that relates ...
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Based on our long-term feldwork in Yamal in 2008–2020, we would like to consider the global issues of climate change within the framework of local cases demonstrating the perceptions of people and their reactions (psychological and... more
Based on our long-term feldwork in Yamal in 2008–2020, we would like to consider the global issues of climate change within the framework of local cases demonstrating the perceptions of people and their reactions (psychological and behavioral) to these changes. Refecting on our observations of nomadic daily life over a number of years, our continuing conversations in chums (nomadic tents) on environmental changes and analyzing the results of interviews, we decided to group the views of the Yamal tundra people into two types. One type includes several cases related to the temporality of climate change as observed by Indigenous people. The other type is spatial and includes the Nenets’ responses to adverse events, as seen in changes in migration patterns and tundra mobility.
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Research Interests: Biology, Ecology, Biological Sciences, Tooth wear, Arctic, and 4 moreArctic Fox, Polar Biology, Vulpes, and lagopus
Warming-driven growth of tall woody vegetation in the Arctic has the potential to accelerate climate change through multiple positive feedbacks. Local-scale evidence suggests that large herbivores limit this vegetation shift, but there is... more
Warming-driven growth of tall woody vegetation in the Arctic has the potential to accelerate climate change through multiple positive feedbacks. Local-scale evidence suggests that large herbivores limit this vegetation shift, but there is uncertainty at larger, regional scales whether current herbivory pressure is a major top-down control on ecosystem structure and functioning. Across a 67,000 km2 region of the Yamal Peninsula in West Siberia, we integrated satellite remote sensing with a novel data set mapping the migrations of herds comprising 151,000 domesticated reindeer. Where reindeer numbers varied over space, higher reindeer herbivory pressure was consistently linked with lower coverage of tall woody vegetation. Within areas dominated by this vegetation type, productivity and climate were increasingly decoupled where reindeer density was higher. Our spaceborne fingerprint detection suggests that large herbivores, at current population densities, counteract Arctic vegetation responses to climate change over large spatial scales.
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The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied using GPS collars. Data were collected during the summer-autumn of 2021 from the private Nenets herd in the South of Yamal Peninsula,... more
The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied using GPS collars. Data were collected during the summer-autumn of 2021 from the private Nenets herd in the South of Yamal Peninsula, Russia. We classified the types of herders' influence on reindeer and estimated the densities of GPS fixes on pastures in four time periods in June-November. Based on ethnographic data and personal experience of migrating with Nenets, we hypothesized that a long-lasting stay of reindeer at a nomadic campsite is the significant indicator of human influence on a herd. Our GPS data registered that reindeer stayed at campsites significantly longer in July during the peak of insect harassment. This factor determined the maximum level of human control over the herd as shown by the limited distance of dispersal of reindeer from a campsite. By early August, the active phase of bloodsucking insects concludes as does active control of the herd, allowing a return to freer foraging and increased range of movement.
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The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied using GPS collars. Data were collected during the summer-autumn of 2021 from the private Nenets herd in the South of Yamal Peninsula,... more
The movement patterns of domestic reindeer depending on indigenous herding practices were studied using GPS collars. Data were collected during the summer-autumn of 2021 from the private Nenets herd in the South of Yamal Peninsula, Russia. We classified the types of herders' influence on reindeer and estimated the densities of GPS fixes on pastures in four time periods in June-November. Based on ethnographic data and personal experience of migrating with Nenets, we hypothesized that a long-lasting stay of reindeer at a nomadic campsite is the significant indicator of human influence on a herd. Our GPS data registered that reindeer stayed at campsites significantly longer in July during the peak of insect harassment. This factor determined the maximum level of human control over the herd as shown by the limited distance of dispersal of reindeer from a campsite. By early August, the active phase of bloodsucking insects concludes as does active control of the herd, allowing a return to freer foraging and increased range of movement.
Research Interests:
Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conflicts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government officials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula... more
Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conflicts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government officials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula (Russia), nearly half of the indigenous Nenets people are reindeer herders. They have recently faced many challenges, such as high mortality of reindeer from pasture icing or disease outbreaks. In addition, predation of arctic fox on reindeer calves is perceived as an increasing problem. Here, we use an interdisciplinary approach to study this emerging predation problem. We present here results from semi-structured interviews with indigenous people, as well as from biological monitoring of fox populations. Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how different factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the abandonment of the fur trade in the 1990s, the building of huge industrial facilities providing possible resource subsidies and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather events leading to weak reindeer, high reindeer mortality and abundant carcasses as resources for predators. We discuss how each of these factors affects the abundance of predators as well as the understanding of the herders.
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Since 1990s the collection of panty (reindeer velvet antlers) have become one of the important part of the economy of the tundra peoples. The panty trade had formed the whole social network between reindeer herders and “merchants” — the... more
Since 1990s the collection of panty (reindeer velvet antlers) have become one of the important part of the economy of the tundra peoples. The panty trade had formed the whole social network between reindeer herders and “merchants” — the collectors of panty connecting a reindeer herder with the global market. After the outbreak of anthrax in 2016 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the discussion of the problems of overgrazing and the lack of reindeer pastures have intensified. Some of the scholars claim that the steep rise of the Yamal reindeer herds in the last decades is closely related with the so-called “panty reindeer herding” (allegedly more profitably than the meat-oriented herding but treating the pastures more extensively because of the increasing of the number of the unslaughtered animals) and such a view have provoked the huge discussion. The article presents the different views of the polemicists and analyzes them. To understand the whole mechanism of the panty busines...
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Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conficts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government ofcials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula... more
Human-wildlife problems often arise when predators kill livestock. This can develop into serious conficts between traditional pastoralists and other stakeholders, such as government ofcials and conservationists. In the Yamal Peninsula (Russia), nearly half of the indigenous Nenets people are reindeer herders. They have recently faced many challenges, such as high mortality of reindeer from pasture icing or disease outbreaks. In addition, predation of arctic fox on reindeer calves is perceived as an increasing problem. Here, we use an interdisciplinary approach to study this emerging predation problem. We present here results from semi-structured interviews with indigenous people, as well as from biological monitoring of fox populations. Our field data were obtained in Erkuta, in the south of Yamal and in Sabetta in the north, close to a newly built industrial settlement. We show how diferent factors may have come together to create a problematic situation. These factors include the ...