Why don't Svalbard reindeer migrate?

Abstract

Reindeer and caribou are best known as migratory, seasonally nomadic animals; many continental populations, for example, travel between distinct summer and winter ranges which may lie hundreds of km apart. Much less is known about the movements of animals belonging to island populations. This paper describes seasonal and annual movements of wild reindeer Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus on the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard, based on observations of nine animals captured and individually marked in Adventdalen, Spitsbergen, between 1977 and 1982. Four ear‐tagged reindeer (one male and three females) were followed extensively for between four and seven years. Five radio‐collared females were followed intensively for seven months in 1982. Svalbard reindeer seem neither to undertake long migrations nor to be nomadic within seasons like mountain reindeer or barren‐ground caribou. They appear instead to use small, traditional, seasonal home ranges more, for example, like red deer or wild sheep. This atypical behaviour is discussed in relation to the dispersion of reindeers' resources in Svalbard.