Compensation was applied for for more than 70,000 lost animals, but compensation was only paid for just under 23,000 domestic reindeer in the reindeer husbandry year 2020/2021, informs The Norwegian Environment Agency.
– The harsh winter two years ago has resulted in higher mortality and increased vulnerability to predator loss, and a certain increase in some predator populations has contributed somewhat to increased losses. At the same time, we see a large increase in reindeer replaced due to losses caused by golden eagles that are difficult to explain, says director Ellen Hambro in the Norwegian Environment Agency.
Just over 8,000 of the almost 23,000 lost reindeer are attributed to damage from golden eagles. The golden eagle population in Norway is according to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) of around 2,000 individuals and most live in northern Norway.
The number of domestic reindeer varies from year to year, but there are currently about 250,000 domestic reindeer in Norway, more than 185,000 of them in Finnmark, according to the government.
–
