ARENDAL, Norway, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Dams, mountain cabins and hydroelectric facilities are threatening Europe's last remaining population of wild reindeer, New Scientist reported Friday.
Conservationists warn human activity in wilderness areas is growing so rapidly, both wild and farmed reindeer may one day suffer a similar fate in their strongholds across the Arctic tundra.
Christian Nellemann of the U.N. Environment Program in Arendal, Norway, and colleagues have documented the steep decline of the Norwegian reindeer.
To flee human construction projects, animals crowd into ever smaller areas, with ever scarcer supplies of the lichen on which they feed.
"The situation in Norway is quite critical," said Nellemann. "They've lost 50 percent of their habitat in 50 years."
Summer population densities in these zones now fall to 36 percent of what they were before the building projects.
Instead, herds crowd into remoter areas where densities have increased by 217 percent.
In winter the effect is even more extreme. Reindeer move away from developed areas in such numbers that herd density falls to just 8 percent of its natural level.
Nellemann said obstacles like roads, power lines, reservoirs and dams serve as frontiers that reindeer herds are reluctant to cross.
