Wet Snows Of Recent Years Making Life Harder For Scandinavian Reindeer, Herding Peoples - Reuters

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Nils Torbjorn Nutti, a Sami reindeer herder who leads sleigh tours, isn't so sanguine. The deep wet snow created by the warmer weather has made life tough for his animals.

Reindeer eat lichen, or white reindeer moss, which they can smell and dig to through a metre of snow. But the wet snow of recent winters is difficult to move and often the Sami have to resort to factory food to stop their animals starving.

"My father, he says it's the reindeer who should feed you, not the opposite way. Of course, when it's bad times you must do it so they survive," Nutti said. "If the climate is going to be like researchers are talking about and what we already seeing ... of course it's going to affect us here."

His biggest fear is that it will eventually become too expensive to keep reindeer, a disaster for the Sami even if people found other work. "If we lost our animals -- that's our soul," he said. "That's something I cannot think about."

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39620/story.htm