Responses of Human-Rangifer Systems to the Fall of the Soviet Union

The article is based on the analyses of statistics data gathered at federal, regional, and local levels, and on interviews with herders and hunters, their families, managers of herding and hunting enterprises, and local decisions makers. Data used in this paper were gathered during numerous trips to different regions of the Russian North in 1989-2009, from Kola Peninsula to Chukotka. Human-Rangifer Systems (HRSs) of Russian include traditional reindeer herding as well as subsistence and commercial wild reindeer hunting by indigenous and other populations in tundra and taiga areas. In the 1990s, HRSs were affected by a political and socio-economic crisis produced by the collapse of the Soviet Union's and its centralized planned economy. The impacts gave researchers an exceptional opportunity to study out how different types of HRSs responded to dramatic changes in socio-economic conditions, and their effects on ecological systems. During the past 10 years the total number of domesticated reindeer in Russia reduced by fifty percent (from 2,303,900, in January 1990 to 1,196,700 in January, 2001). Through the same period wild reindeer increased due to the cessation of commercial hunting enterprises in Taimyr area, which had previously harvested about 100,000 wild reindeer annually. Today there has been a revitalization of reindeer husbandry in many parts of the Russian North (1,517,500 domesticated reindeer in January, 2009), and a reduction of wild reindeer populations in Taimyr and Yakutia due to poaching and lack of hunting regulations. The fluctuations of reindeer population number were connected mainly with the internal policy of the state that affected all branches of the rural economy. However the trends of reindeer numbers in different regions varied, in part because herding and hunting communities demonstrated different adaptive strategies. The most striking was a difference in reindeer number trends in Yamal-Nenets (important growth) and Chukotka (dramatic fall down) areas. The HRS responses depended mainly on the type of HRS system. These include a) state managed meat production herding system (e.g., Chukotka, Koriakia.), b) family-based meat production herding system (e.g., Yamal, Komi Republic), c) transportation and subsistence herding and hunting systems (e.g., Central Siberian taiga), d) commercial hunting system (e.g., Taimyr, Northern Yakutia). The responses appear to have been a reaction to the previously followed principle: "increase production and economic efficiency". The removal of centralized state control of herding and hunting in Russia, which previously unified reindeer economy throughout the Russian North during the soviet time, has given rise to greater heterogeneity of HRSs that are today more diverse and resilience for the future.