2002 ARCSS All-Hands Workshop

Circumpolar Rangifer Monitoring

Don E. Russell¹, Gary Kofinas², Brad Griffith³, Joan Earner^4
1Environment Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service, 91782 Alaska Highway, Whitehorse, YT Y1A 5B7, Canada, Phone 867/393-6801, Fax 867/668-3591, don.russell@ec.gc.ca
²Institute of Arctic Studies, Dartmouth College, Box 832, NH, gary.kofinas@dartmouth.edu
³Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Box 757020, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA, Phone 907/474-5067, Fax 907/474-6716, ffdbg@uaf.edu
⁴Environment Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service, 91782 Alaska Highway, Whitehorse, YT Y1A 5B7, Canada

Caribou/Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is a keystone subsistence resource of the Arctic System. Following a directive from the Arctic Council to the committee for Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), a circumpolar monitoring initiative focusing on Human-Rangifer Systems has been established. The monitoring program includes five areas of activity: 1) Remote sensing of Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) analysis and its relationship to herd reproductive success; 2) climate, biological and socio-economic indictors of change 3) the local and traditional knowledge perspectives on conditions and system processes; 4) assessment of trends and implications of change using simulation modeling, and 5 ) communications tools that disseminate findings and promote discussion among parties about the overall health of the system. Details on the circumpolar Rangifer monitoring network are founds at http://www.rangifer.net, the site of the Human Role in Reindeer/Caribou Systems initiative of the International Arctic Science Committee.

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