Transcript:

REINDEER BIRTHINGambience: ReindeerHeres a program from our archives.That's the sound of a herd of reindeer in Northern Scandinavia, in the part of the world known as Lapland. This month, hundreds of thousands of reindeer are giving birth to their young. The newborns will be faced with problems their ancestors never had to deal with, but they'll receive help from a traditional ally. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Reindeer give birth in the mountains and coastal regions of Scandinavia. Within a few hours of birth, the calves are up and running, and they'll spend the next several months nursing from their mothers.But the young need to be weaned by winter, because when the cold sets in, it's time for the herd to move on. Reindeer are migratory animals, and they spend the winter months in the forests further inland, where the Arctic weather isn't quite so harsh.For thousands of years, the reindeer have been accompanied on their migration by the native Sami people, known to the world as Lapps. They use the reindeer as a source for meat and milk. But cities have now spring up along the traditional migration routes, forcing the reindeer to rely more on their human partners. Paul Anders-Simma was raised in a reindeer herding family.Simma: What has happened for the last hundred years is that when the northern parts of Scandinavia was industrialized, the forest was cut down, towns has been built on reindeer pasturing grounds, the migration ways has been cut off. So that's the difficulty, how to pass a city, a dam, a road, a railroad. This has forced the reindeer herding to change, to start to use helicopters, motorcycles, cars, and now they are even migrating by putting reindeers into big trailers, just to pass these towns and big open areas where the forest is cut away.Weve been listening to a program from our archives. Im Jim Metzner and this is thePulse of the Planet.