Abstract
The productive performance of large ungulates in extensive pastoral grazing systems is modulated simultaneously by the effects of climate change and human intervention independent of climate change. The latter includes the expansion of private, civil and military activity and infrastructure and the erosion of land rights. We used Saami reindeer husbandry in Norway as a model in which to examine trends in, and to compare the influence of, both effects on a pastoral grazing system. Downscaled projections of mean annual temperature over the principal winter pasture area (Finnmarksvidda) closely matched empirical observations across 34 years to 2018. The area, therefore, is not only warming but seems likely to continue to do so. Warming notwithstanding, 50-year (1969–2018) records of local weather (temperature, precipitation and characteristics of the snowpack) demonstrate considerable annual and decadal variation which also seems likely to continue and alternately to amplify and to counter net warming. Warming, moreover, has both positive and negative effects on ecosystem services that influence reindeer. The effects of climate change on reindeer pastoralism are evidently neither temporally nor spatially uniform, nor indeed is the role of climate change as a driver of change in pastoralism even clear. The effects of human intervention on the system, by contrast, are clear and largely negative. Gradual liberalization of grazing rights from the 18thCentury has been countered by extensive loss of reindeer pasture. Access to ~50% of traditional winter pasture was lost in the 19thCentury owing to the closure of international borders to the passage of herders and their reindeer. Subsequent to this the area of undisturbed pasture within Norway has decreased by 71%. Loss of pasture due to piecemeal development of infrastructure and to administrative encroachment that erodes herders' freedom of action on the land that remains to them, are the principal threats to reindeer husbandry in Norway today. These tangible effects far exceed the putative effects of current climate change on the system. The situation confronting Saami reindeer pastoralism is not unique: loss of pasture and administrative, economic, legal and social constraints bedevil extensive pastoral grazing systems across the globe.
Highlights
The productive performance of free-living large ungulates, including wild populations and domestic herds managed in extensive pastoral grazing systems, is modulated by two kinds of drivers: those associated with variation in the natural environment and those associated with human intervention independent of the natural environment (Godde et al, 2018)
The onset of the frost season has delayed by 9.8 days, from a regression estimate of 8th October [day of year (DoY) = 280.9] in 1969 to 18th October (DoY = 290.7) in 2018; the average rate of delay has been 2.0 days · decade−1
The end of the frost season has advanced by 9.3 days, from a regression estimate of 27th May (DoY = 116.9) in 1969 to 6th May (DoY 126.4) in 2018; the average rate of advance has been 1.9 days · decade−1 (Figure 11A)
Summary
The productive performance of free-living large ungulates, including wild populations and domestic herds managed in extensive pastoral grazing systems, is modulated by two kinds of drivers: those associated with variation in the natural environment and those associated with human intervention independent of the natural environment (Godde et al, 2018). We examine spatial and temporal trends in local weather conditions around Finnmarksvidda, which is the principle reindeer winter pasture area in Norway (Figure 7).
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