Abstract
DOMESTIC reindeer were introduced into Alaska from Siberia at the end of the last century and have done so well there, according to Mr. M. A. Earle Kelly in an article in the National Review for February (p. 215), that the reindeer ranching industry in Alaska is expected to become more important than mining. Now, he says, the threeyear trek of Canada's first herd, of 3000, is nearly at an end, as they will shortly arrive at the Mackenzie delta, there to furnish stock to be established across northern Canada in the interest of the Eskimo, hard-pressed by contact with civilisation, which has destroyed or driven away the animals on which he lived. It is hoped that he will become a reindeer rancher, and four families of the Lapps, so well known in this capacity, have already reached Kittigazuitt in the Mackenzie estuary, in company with Mr. A. E. Porsild, who, with his brother, has been arranging for the purchase and transport of the herd for the Canadian Government. Reindeer have done so exceedingly well in Alaska, which is now even supplying their meat for American markets, that there should be no obstacle to similar success in the contiguous Canadian tundra, which, it is estimated, could carry 12,000,000 of them, where ordinary domestic ungulates could not live.
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Reindeer Ranching in Northern Canada. Nature 129, 609 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129609b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129609b0