Moving beyond ‘claims’ about reindeer pastoralism in Finnmark, Norway: a rejoinder
Authors: Marin Andrei , Sjaastad Espen , Benjaminsen Tor A. , Sara Mikkel Nils M. 
Published: November 2023

A recent article in Pastoralism (Stien et al., Pastoralism 11:1-7, 2021) criticized our earlier analysis of the management models used for reindeer pastoralism in Western Finnmark, Norway (Marin et al., Pastoralism 10:1-8, 2020). According to our critics, we misunderstood the origin of the current emphasis on maximum reindeer numbers and densities. Second, we came to the (wrong) conclusion “that densities are of minor importance for reindeer productivity” because we had made several mistakes in our statistical analyses.

This article discusses the main points we were criticized for, shows where disagreements persist and suggests some possible ways forward. We hope this discussion will help make clearer what we did in our original article and why we still think a focus on density (and implicitly maximum reindeer numbers) is not a good management tool in Western Finnmark. We also show that the influential report from 2001 by Ims and Kosmo was based on controversial interpretations of “quality objectives” for carcass weights as the starting point for their calculations of maximum number of reindeer for each district. In addition, we document some of the reactions from herders to that report and how the choice of districts included in such analyses can lead to different results and conclusions. We re-did our calculations of how much of the variation in the carcass weights of 1.5-year-old bucks (varit) can be explained by the number of reindeer in the spring herd (expressed as density of reindeer over the area of the summer district). The combined results of the two research teams show that between 35 and 46% of the variation can be explained by the density of reindeer, depending on the method, which is much less than the 70% that was found in 2001. Specifically, we show that the difference between our results (35% explained by density) and those of our critics (46% explained by density) is mainly because our critics have included 3 districts from Eastern Finnmark (Karasjok districts) in their analysis, but that there is no obvious reason to include these. We emphasize that research of this kind should think carefully about and report precisely the geographical scale at which the analysis is made and the reasons for this choice. Finally, we show that there is a need to report the views of reindeer herders in a more nuanced and precise way, to reflect variations among them, and to better explain their views.

Our conclusion is still that the density of reindeer herds should not be used as the most important indicator for how well the herds are doing or for how sustainable reindeer pastoralism is in Western Finnmark. This is because other complex environmental and social factors also play a very important role, which needs to be better understood. Because of this, we argue for reindeer herders’ knowledge to be given more practical influence in the management plans.

(Fuomáš ahte lea sámegielat čoahkkáigeassu artihkkala loahpas—geahča Additional file 1 /The article includes a summary in North Sámi language—see Additional file 1).