Sami herder claims cull is infringement of indigenous rights, but Oslo says policy is needed to prevent overgrazing of fragile tundra landscape

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Days before Rudolph and his team set off with Santa’s sleigh on their annual round-the-world dash, a Norwegian reindeer herder has been ordered to put down dozens of their real-life relatives in a controversial cull.



The supreme court in Oslo rejected an appeal by Jovsset Ante Sara, a small reindeer herder from the indigenous Sami community in the Norwegian Arctic, ruling he must comply with an earlier order to cull 41 of his 116-strong herd.

Sara, who had twice successfully challenged the order, argued he would be unable to sustain himself and his family with such a small number of reindeer and that the government’s herd reduction policy was an infringement of indigenous rights.

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The ministry of agriculture and food has vigorously defended its policy, saying it is necessary to prevent Norway’s estimated 220,000 reindeer overgrazing the fragile tundra landscape of the country’s high north.

The court said the order did not violate Sara’s rights, ruling in a majority decision that the reduction policy was “in the interests of the whole reindeer husbandry industry” and regulation was “reasonable and objectively justifiable”.



But Sara’s lawyer, Trond Pedersen Biti, said the ruling did not take the rights of the Sami people into account. “It shows the court does not believe the Sami people can decide on their own destiny,” he said.

“The government seems to believe that the reindeer herders do not know best,” Biti said, adding that his client was “obviously disappointed” but had no intention of abandoning his claim and would take it to the European court of human rights.

The case, which has been running since 2014, has become something of a cause célèbre in Norway, setting indigenous and ancestral rights against broader environmental rights and the importance of ecological biodiversity.

In an earlier hearing, the government’s lawyer, Stein-Erik Jahr Dahl, said the right to herd reindeer did not include a right “to keep a specific number of reindeer, nor to keep enough reindeer to enjoy a financial return or do it as a full-time job”.

The government’s reduction policy was aimed at keeping the overall herd down to a level that was “ecologically, economically and culturally sustainable” while at the same time guaranteeing the animals’ welfare.

But a professor of environmental sciences, Tor A Benjaminson, said in a comment for the NRK state broadcaster earlier this year that the policy was arrogant, knowledge-free and “bore no relation to the facts”. There was little evidence that constantly changing vegetation levels were affected by overgrazing, he said.

Sara’s case has roused strong feelings among Norway’s Sami community. Earlier this month his sister, Maret Anne Sara, drew attention to the case by hanging a curtain made of 400 bullet-holed reindeer skulls outside the parliament in Oslo.