Energy of Reindeer Breeding: Driving Actions in the Controlling Impacts in Ecological and Ethno-Social Contexts

Abstract

Sustainability of socio-ecological systems is ensured, firstly, through relatively powerful energy flows associated with the interaction of material components, and secondly, through the low energy controlling impacts that drive these flows. Reindeer herding is based on traditional patterns of controlling the flow of biological matter and energy that have developed in different ethnic communities and different types of geographic landscapes (“tundra feeds reindeer, reindeer feeds man”). These models include sustainable sets of traditional practices, including various methods of individual and group taming of animals, direct and indirect methods of controlling their behaviour, spatio-temporal models of seasonal movements of reindeer herds, etc. All together, they provide a symbiosis between reindeer herder communities and populations of domesticated reindeer. The energy of traditional reindeer breeding is based, on the one hand, on optimal strategies of movement in space, which allows obtain the maximum effect from the use of pasture fodder resources by optimizing the reindeer bodily heat balance. On the other hand, it is connected with the traditional practices, which help to save effort and energy in reindeer herd management. Adaptation of traditional reindeer breeding to industrial and post-industrial society is expressed in the transition to “gasoline” and “digital” reindeer herding. The first transition is accompanied by a dramatic increase in the systematic energy consumption, and the second, apparently, will lead to their reduction