Science: Wildlife feeling the heat in cold Russia

A shepherd tends to his flock of reindeer near Kanchalan in the Chukotka region. As global warming takes effect, the reindeer need to go further north to find cooler grazing grounds.

IT is summer in the reindeer-herding village of Kanchalan in northern Russia and with not an iceberg in sight, residents are acquiring a taste for bathing in the local river.
"The reindeers’ health is suffering," said the worried head of the state-controlled reindeer company here, Arkady Makhushkin, explaining that the animals had to be herded greater distances to find cooler grazing grounds in upland areas.As he tries to work out the effects of rising temperatures on his 32,000 reindeer, questions are being asked about global warming across northern Russia, from Chukotka region in the east, where Kanchalan is located, to Murmansk in the west. In Kanchalan, some 70km northwest of the regional capital Anadyr, teachers at the local school blamed global warming for cracks that have appeared in the building due to melting of the permafrost below ground.And while Makhushkin worries about his reindeer, receding ice is also proving troublesome for sea mammal hunters.
In coastal districts, members of the Chukchi ethnic group are struggling to adapt as whales head for cooler waters even further north, says Eduard Zdor, secretary of Chukotka's Association of Traditional Marine Mammal Hunters.Also along the coast, there is growing conflict between people and polar bears. The bears have been forced ashore as their normal habitat, the polar ice sheets, now recedes as much as 1,000km north of Chukotka in summer.In the last five years, two people have been killed and another maimed by polar bears in Chukotka as the animals have taken to approaching villages, desperate for food, says Anatoly Kochnev, a fisheries researcher with the agriculture ministry.While the whales are retreating farther north, the longer summer fishing season is so far not having much effect on other sea life, said Anatoly Zaitsev, head of a local fishing team."As long as there isn’t over-fishing, we’ll continue to have fish," he said. — AFP