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A reindeer herder
© AFP/File Dario Thuburn

"Its getting more difficult," says a weather-beaten Vasily Cherchevich, a reindeer herder for 30 years, as he speeds off on his snowmobile across a frozen lake surrounded by frosted pine trees.

The appearance of cellphones and snowmobiles has made his job easier but salaries are low and warmer winters mean the reindeer cannot easily cross frozen rivers, says the 44-year-old.

At a local vocational school, housed in a single-story wooden house, Valentina Sovkina complains there are not enough young people who want to learn the trade.

"There are very few people who want to become reindeer herders, very few," says Sovkina, 42, the deputy head of the school who belongs to the native ethnic Saami population.

Out of 40 herders trained up in the arts of lassoing, tagging and feeding the reindeer, as well as warding off bears, only 10 have graduated in the last 29 years.

Reindeers being herded in Russia
© AFP/File Tatyana Makeyeva

The inhabitants of Lovozero, an impoverished village of 3,000 people in Russia's Murmansk region say the reindeer herd is shrinking and young people are reluctant to become herders.

"Reindeer herding is not attractive, you have to spend a lot of time in the tundra. You can't set up a family," Sovkina says.

The average herder earns 142 dollars (120 euros) a month and has to live in the tundra forests between March and November in shifts of up to two months, sometimes longer.

The herding crisis began with the Soviet experiment -- painful decades for a population that has lived in the upper reaches of Russia, as well as Norway and Sweden, for thousands of years.

Herders were forced to move to Lovozero from their pastures in the 1960s because of Soviet military and industrial activity.

Sovkina was one of hundreds of Saami children who were then forcibly taken away from their parents and housed in dormitories.

"It was terrifying... We thought we were fine as long as we had a reindeer hide to sleep on. But the government said each child had to have a little bed."

Soviet changes led many herders to commit suicide and others to turn to alcohol, tearing a vital bond between local families and the reindeer herding life.

A herd of reindeers
© AFP/File

According to a legend popular among the Saamis, reindeer and humans are both descended from Meandash, a half-reindeer, half-man deity with wings instead of arms.

At Tundra, a local farm that is the villages main employer, the director says herders are powerless against poachers and rich foreign hunters who mow down their herds.

By the end of World War II, during which reindeer brigades transported Soviet armed forces, the number of reindeer at Tundra was 41,000. In 2005, there were 28,141 reindeer left.

And, even though the numbers of reindeer are shrinking, there are only 74 men to herd them -- when that figure should be 101, Startsev says.

"The herders are no longer the masters of their pastures," says the bulky 45-year-old with ruffled hair and a thick moustache.

But Larisa Avdeyeva, head of the local community centre, says the reindeer herding life could be preserved by fostering more cultural pride and encouraging more tourism.

Her centre, funded by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, has revived traditional feasts for the regions 2,000 Saamis and holds folk art workshops.

"Before, they were considered third-class citizens -- now the Saami are not ashamed any more."

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