VALUE OF REINDEER

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 120, 23 May 1928, Page 6

VALUE OF REINDEER

ALASKAN ESKIMOS (From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 4th April. Since the great caribou herds have changed their migration, the problem of feeding and clothing the Eskimos and Indians in the Far North has become intensified., Already the Northwest Mounted Police have done much in training the natives to dry and store fish for the winter, ■ but experience in Alaska shows that the solution lies in acclimatising the reindeer. Some amelioration has already been achieved by lessening the wolf menace and conserving wild life in sanctuaries, to afford better hunting for the natives. The introduction of reindeer in Alaska has proved a great success. The industry, fostered by biologists and botanists of the United States Government, is now on a permanent footing. Attempts by private organisations in Northern and North-East-ern Canada failed for- lack of proper grazing for the reindeer. The Dominion Government last year engaged two brothers, 'Messrs. A. E. and R. T. Porsild, experieuced botanists and Arctic travellers, to inquire into the reindeer industry in Alaska, and to investigate grazing possibilities in the Mackenzie. district, and along the Arctic coast to the East. The two investigators spent nine months in Alaska, and have now moved along the Arctic coast to Aklavik, the Eskimo metropolis in the Arctic. An area of 15,000 square miles, lying east of the Mackenzie River delta and inland from the coast, lias been surveyed as a possible reindeer grazing area. It is said to be equal to the best type of reindeer pasture in Alaska, and capable of providing _ grazing for 250,000 reindeer. The investigation is being continued into the Great Bear country.