NEW INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 73, 27 March 1931, Page 8

NEW INDUSTRY

HERDS OF REINDEER

AN ANIMAL OF VALUE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOTJVEB, 4th March.

Forty years ago Dr. Sheldon, acting for the United States Government, brought a small herd of reindeer and a few Lapp herders to Alaska. The animals there now number a million. The Government of Canada has a herd, which lias boon on the hoof for two years, travelling overland from Alaska to the Mackenzie delta,' in charge oJ! two Greenland Danes, the Porsild brothers. It will arrive there next fall. The reindeer is a domestic cousin to the caribou. Unlike him, he can bo controlled. There ia no natural ordor or sequence about the movements or migration of the caribou. Vast herds, without leaders or organisation, wander indiscriminately across the Are-, tic tundra, from Hudson. Bay to Alaska and back again. The Government, determined to provide an adequate food and clothing supply for the Eskimo, is transplanting the reindeer. Ralph Louicn, pioneer of the industry in Alaska, says there is room in the Northern tundra of Canada for 12,000,000 reindeer. Reindeer meat, nourishing as beef, tender as lamb, is now a regular article oi diet ,in the hotels and restaurants of Seattle, Portland and San Francisco. Carcasses dress about 1501b, and have a value, with by-products, of about £6. The skins provide the Eskimos with clothing and are converted by United States manufacturers into gloves,. moccasins, and other leather goods. Knife handles and novelties are made from the horns. The; hair, extremely buoyant, makes excellent filling for life belts. The reindoer is also a dairy purposes animal. There are some in Labrador and Sir Richard Grenfell j says: "The fresh milk of the does has supplied us with what is a real vital necessity, and one obtainable in Labrador in no other way, while the excellent and easily-made cheeses afford . a moans of storing nutriment in a palat- I able and assimilable form without any outlay for a preserving plant."