Livestock Management Challenges in Alaska

by J. David Swanson and Jeanette Colville, NRCS, Anchorage, Alaska

        Range fires, livestock diseases, competition for forage, predators, land use conflicts, severe weather conditions, bureaucratic red tape, and unpredictable markets--a familiar scenario to the challenges facing livestock growers in the Great American West.  Take the same ingredients with a bit of a twist and you have the same challenges faced today by Alaska's reindeer herders.  On the Seward Peninsula in the Bering Sea region, predators are wolves and bears; competitors for forage are musk ox and caribou; and forage is tundra grasses, berries, and lichens.
       Reindeer herding is well integrated into the history of rural Alaska.  Reverend Sheldon Jackson, General Agent of Education, brought the first heard of reindeer from Siberia in 1891 to provide a stable food supply for Native Alaskans following the decline of caribou in the late 1800's, and the negative impacts of commercial whaling, ivory harvesting, and epidemic diseases.
    Reflecting the success of the introduction of reindeer into Alaska, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Range Conservationist J. David Swanson and University of Alaska-Anchorage Professor M.H.W. Barker reported at the First Arctic Ungulate Conference in Nuuk, Greenland, in September 1991, "that as well as a normal part of the local diet, shipment of reindeer meat to the lower 48 states in the late 1920's was around five million pounds.  By-product markets were developed for antlers, blood, and viscera.  Antlers were exported and used for knife handles and for their perceived aphrodisiac properties.  Skins were used locally for items of apparel.   Corrals, slaughtering plants, underground storage tunnels and shipping facilities were contracted throughout the reindeer areas."
    Early cooperative efforts between the Bureau of Biological Survey and the Alaska College of Agriculture and School of Mines began in 1920 to initiate reindeer husbandry and range management focusing on breeding, forage, animal habits, disease, insects, morphology, and caribou crossbreeding.  During the early 1930's, herd populations thrived, numbering more than 120,000.  Following this period of growth, herd populations began to decline, attributed to inadequate herding, loss of winter lichen range, wolf predation, and economic pressures, with herd numbers dropping to about 10,000 by the early 1950's.
    A dramatic impact to the reindeer industry has been the first shift in more than 100 years in the winter migration pattern of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH), bringing as many as 90,000 caribou into the Seward Peninsula reindeer grazing areas in winter.  The remainder of this huge 463,000-head herd has kept beyond the eastern areas of the peninsula.  Although the number of caribou migrating within the peninsula dropped to about 10,000 this past year, according to Alaska Fish and Game managers in Nome, the impact on the reindeer herds has been intense, with some reindeer herds along the eastern permit areas disappearing completely, wandering off with the migrating caribou as they leave the area on their summer migration north across the Brooks Range to Alaska's North Slope.

NRCS Technician Steven Gregory surveys winter lichen forage on the Davis reindeer herd range.

    Large numbers of wolves following the caribou migration have moved into many of the reindeer ranges, becoming resident populations preying on the more static food source of the reindeer herds.  "The great influx of caribou in the previous two winters resulted in 100% loss of preferred winter forage in the lowlands," said Swanson, "and reindeer herders are aware of the critical importance of winter feed supplies, with overgrazing and fire presenting the greatest danger to lichen winter ranges."  Lichens, the winter staple of the reindeer, grow at the rate of about one-sixteenth of an inch per year.
    The Alaska Reindeer Herds Association (RHA), headquartered in the small remote village of Nome on the Bering Sea, is a program of Kawerak, Inc., an Alaska Native regional non-profit corporation.  The RHA is a group of eighteen herd owners and three Tribal Councils.  The association has worked hard to upgrade management of herd population using scientific range practices with technical assistance from the University of Alaska and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
From 1976 to the present, NRCS has been working with the association helping to improve reindeer production and management.  From 1976 to 1983,ecological sites were mapped and all information in GIS format for the permit areas, NRCS has been training the reindeer herders on the use of soil, vegetation, hydrology and other data layers.  Up until the influx of caribou on the peninsula, many herders were working with rotation grazing systems and going to great lengths to manage their ranges for improved lichen production.  Conservation plans developed during the 1980's employed a 5 to 7-year rotation grazing system.  This resting time provided lichens an opportunity to recover sufficiently after grazing.  NRCS, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and the Herders Association have worked hard to evaluate range conditions and to fine-tune her management.  Overall, on the Seward Peninsula, lichen production was increasing and range conditions were also improving.   Caribou, however, were quick to recognize the forage opportunity.  The WACH has not always been so large, and during the late 1970's, caribou herd size was a cautiously guarded 76,000.  The increase of the WACH has been phenomenal.   Ironically, the

work that was done by herders and agency specialists to maintain and improve forage conditions may have been a major factor that attracted the caribou to the area.  This has been a difficult time for the industry--difficult to watch reindeer herders lose their reindeer and the use of their ranges.  Some of the herders have lost all of their reindeer and have had to move away from their home villages and relocate to other parts of Alaska.  Still, the way of life and the challenge to earn a living off reindeer herding lies deep in the heart of the herders.  They remain optimistic and wait for the time when the caribou will migrate to the Nulato Hills east of the peninsula so they can start reindeer operations again.  Many options have been explored, but natural events are difficult to control in this remote sub-arctic environment.
NRCS is working with the reindeer herders through the Alaska Soil and Water Conservation District with USDA's Environmental Quality Improvement Program (EQIP).  This year, RHA will deploy several satellite collars to help manage the remaining reindeer and the winter range as efficiently as possible.  Plans are to deploy the collars this September and monitor reindeer locations throughout the yearly seasons.  All the key players are looking forward to expanding the scope of EQIP with hopes that it might provide herders with an effective range management tool.
Sitting in her small office in Nome, surrounded by boxes of ear tags waiting for distribution to herders for this year's round-up, RHA Executive Director Rose Fosdick expresses her concern for the future of the reindeer industry.  "The reindeer herds have been impacted by the migrating caribou herd for the past five to ten years.   The caribou merge with the reindeer herds and the reindeer follow them off when they leave the area.  The caribou bring predators with them - wolves, brown bears, ravens, foxes - and they transfer brucellosis and other parasites, reintroducing them into the range."  The tow most critical issues facing the herders, according to Fosdick, is the winter competition for lichens, and the need to update range data on fire.   "In the spring, when it's time to round up, weights are down, and each year there are fewer and fewer animals."

Streamside Grazing Workshop

   A steamside grazing workshop will be held at the Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center in southeastern Minnesota on September 8 and 9.  This is a cooperative effort among the Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin state GLCI Steering Committees.  The first day of the workshop will be held at the Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center near Lanesboro, MN.  Speakers will include livestock producers, university professors, researchers, veterinarians, agronomists, and biologists.  Major topics to be addressed include:

watershed assessment

animal behavior

animal health

biodiversity and water quality regulations

economics

grazing management

riparian area management

effects of water quality on fish/wildlife/livestock

The second day of the workshop will be a tour of three successful grazing operations in the area:

    The Ralph Lentz Farm, near Lake City, is a grass-based beef operation.  The effects of various grazing strategies on riparian area corridor management have been studied on the Lentz Farm since 1967. Highlights of this tour stop will include winter feeding systems, warm season grass establishment, forage production and management, and monitoring for water quality and ecosystem health.
    The Pat and Stephanie Murphy Farm, also near Lake City, is currently used to pasture replacement dairy heifers. This tour stop will include discussion of grazing system design to improve forage production profitability and improve water quality and stream characteristics.  An electrofishing demonstration will allow participants to see how trout are thriving in the streams of this farm.
    The Jerry and Kim Wiebusch Farm, near Zumbro Falls, is a grass-based dairy.  This tour group will feature rotational grazing, water delivery systems, wildlife, windbreaks, low-cost parlor design, soil health, runoff, and nutrient management.  Tools used to track ecological performance (such as soil structure and bird counts) will be demonstrated.
    Registration fees will include overnight accommodations and meals provided by the Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center.  For more information about the tour, contact:  Dennis Neffendorf, USDA-NRCS, 375 Jackson St., Suite 600, St. Paul, MN 55101, 651-602-7867.

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