Celebrating 70 Years - The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd

Reintroducing Reindeer

Where wildlife with human intervention or management is concerned, nothing is new, illustrate by a reintroduction project now celebrating, on the 27 May 2022, its 70th anniversary. Long before re-wilding became the buzz word with all the hype which currently surrounds a number of  many vaunted species, reindeer were reintroduced to Scotland’s Cairngorm mountain’s in 1952. The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd have successfully enjoyed seven decades amongst this beautifully wild mountain habitat.

Reindeer and Caribou - Rangifer tarandus, are the same animal but more commonly referred to as Reindeer in their Arctic Tundra and Boreal Forest regions. An animal supremely adapted to a hostile environment where winter temperatures of minus 35°C are commonplace. Impervious to the frigid weather their two coats — a woolly undercoat and an outer coat comprising hollow hairs, enables them to lay down on snow which will not melt beneath them. In Tilly’s book - Reindeer  - An Arctic Life, she delightfully refers to a reindeer coat ‘being like a thermos flask, letting no heat out or cold in’! Remarkably reindeer can see ultraviolet light; urine, fur and lichen are black under UV light to these animals. That may seem insignificant to us humans, but the urine identifies other species of animal, lichen is their food and fur - that of the predatory wolf, shows as black.

Opinion varies as to when the last wild reindeer roamed the mountainous areas of Britain, generally thought to be around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, although evidence of semi-domesticated reindeer has been found dating back just 800 years.

The background to today’s Cairngorm Reindeer Herd is fascinating, not only for re-establishing a species long lost from our sub-arctic mountain region, but also for the interaction and association that reindeer have had with humans for thousands of years. In the late 1940s a proposal had been put to Britains Ministry Of Agriculture, to bring reindeer back in to this country. The proposal came from a socio anthropologist who, during the 1930s, had studied remote nomadic reindeer herders in China and Mongolia: and who latterly had married a Swedish Sami reindeer herder - Mr Mikel Utsi. The Utsi family were traditional nomadic reindeer herders, travelling with their animals from Sweden to summer pastures in Norway, returning to winter in Sweden.

Mr Utsi came to the Scottish Highlands in the late 1940s believing that the Cairngorm Mountains, the sub-arctic plateau rising up over 1200 m,  replicated the landscape and climate of his home lands. Importantly including the vegetation and lichens, crucial to the reindeer diet.

In 1952 eight animals — two bulls, a castrate, two young females and three female calves were brought over from Sweden, where following a period of quarantine, they were moved to an area of the Rothiemurchus Estate, their first Scottish home. This was not Mikel Utsi’s preferred location, that came in the mid 1950s when he and his wife, Dr Lindgren persuaded the Forestry Commission to allow them to move the herd onto the northern slopes of the Cairngorms an area extending to over 2400 hectares. In the 1960s they built Reindeer House in Glenmore Forest, the current head quarters that enjoys vistas across the mountains and hectares of reindeer grazed landscape. During the early years with some setbacks along the way,  the herd steadily increased in numbers vindicating the initial instincts underlying the original reintroduction proposal.

On many occasions I have visited Tilly and Alan Smith enjoying their hospitality, laughter and hours of pleasure being on the hills amongst the reindeer, wildlife and beautiful landscape (In 1981 Tilly initially volunteered to work with the reindeer and herder Alan, they eventually married). They  took over the herd after, firstly Mikel Utsi and then Dr Lindgren died. Looking back I do not think I understood just how much Mr Utsi brought the Sami culture and reindeer herders way of life with those first eight reindeer and how 70 years on, in a singularly different age, Tilly and Alan have modified but continued that legacy. The 1952 castrate - Sarek was the herd leader, a position he held for 16 years. The few castrate animals within any reindeer herd are the pack animals. Sarek was the animal who led the sleigh at Christmas when Mr Utsi used to delight school children and village communities, as he toured round wearing his traditional Sami clothing with the decked out reindeer and sleigh.

From the beginning the reindeer were not enclosed in the way of our zoo culture and nor are they exhibited as such today. The 2,400 ha enclosure allows visitors to walk amongst the herd, but as these reindeer are free-ranging, during the summer months they will often be kilometres away foraging over the tops of the extensive Cairngorm plateau, as I found out several years ago. In an attempt to photograph on the high tops I completely failed to spot a single reindeer, reaching the exposed 1,296 m summit of Braeriach just as  a raging thunderstorm struck.

Maintaining the herd through careful management, bringing in new breeding stock from Sweden to ensure a vibrant and sustainable gene pool, promoting commerciality schemes such as the Adopt a Reindeer or Adopt the Herd through donations to support overheads and the volunteers herders, have formed well judged steps along with a continuation of the Christmas time visits to shopping centres and schools.

But away from this commerciality, nothing has been allowed to detract from the quiet naturalised lives of these docile and beautiful animals. Tilly has become a superb ambassador for the species and an absolute authority on every aspect of reindeer and reindeer culture.  Like the reindeer she is perfectly at home and absorbed by a landscape, that is as much their natural habitat as the Arctic Tundra or Boreal Forests.

In March I was photographing mountain hares amidst the clicking of reindeer tendons while the animals wandered around me, this continual audio communication is their perfect adaption to herd protection when Arctic blizzards and whiteout conditions obliterate all vision.  On the Cairngorm tops with grazing reindeer and mountain hares enjoying spring sunshine, nothing could have been more natural or perfect.

Note: I am indebted to Tilly for much content in this piece, in particular Reindeer - An Arctic Life, written by Tilly