Are we facing new health challenges and diseases in reindeer in Fennoscandia?

Abstract

A large number of semi-domesticated reindeer is lost every year. Predators are the single most important factor for these losses, whereas restrictions on food availability some years also may cause high mortality. In the past, reindeer herding was challenged by severe infectious diseases, killing hundreds and thousands of animals, and having huge economic and social impact on reindeer herding in Fennoscandia. The general zoo-sanitary situation in Fennoscandia is very favourable for the time being, but reindeer herding is sometimes challenged by disease outbreaks, and diseases play an important role for survival and fitness of reindeer. Reindeer herding is also facing changes and challenges, which also may impact reindeer health and the disease status. Introduction of infectious agents not commonly present in the reindeer population may take place through import of animals, as well as by contact between reindeer, livestock and wildlife. Further, changes in the herding, such as increased feeding, transport, size of herds, animal density and stress load on the animals, may affect the animals ability to cope with infectious diseases. Also changes in weather conditions and climate, such as increased precipitation and mean temperature, may over time lead to restricted availability of pastures, changes in vegetation and changed conditions for parasites and insect vectors. These changes might be especially important for the reproductive success, including fitness of the calves during their first winter. To be able to cope with these changes and their potential impact on reindeer health, increased efforts should be made to gather reference data on health and disease parameters from the different reindeer herding districts, along with epidemiological risk factor analysis. This would increase the ability for the reindeer herding to cope with changes and to continue to produce quality meat products for the market

Herding conditions related to infectious keratoconjunctivitis in semi-domesticated reindeer: a questionnaire-based survey among reindeer herders

“…Corralling and feeding animals will, however, expose the herd to stress which may affect their immunological competence and contribute to the animals being more susceptible to infections. At the same time, the transmission of infectious agents between animals are facilitated due to increased animal-to-animal contact and shared feed and water [ 15 , 19 , 20 ]. Previous outbreaks of IKC, both in Sweden [ 9 ] and Norway [ 10 , 15 ] have indeed occurred in corrals during supplementary feeding.…”

Spatio-temporal variations and uncertainty in land surface modelling for high latitudes: univariate response analysis

“…Several algorithms to extend SVD to tables with more than two entries have been proposed (Tucker, 1966;Carroll and Chang, 1970;Harshman, 1970;Kroonenberg, 1983;Leibovici, 2010), and development of methods and their applications is still very active (Demšar et al, 2013;Kroonenberg, 2016;Takeuchi et al, 2017;Lock and Li, 2018). Most extensions aim to find an optimum decomposition of a multiway table that allows dimension reduction by looking for a decomposition similar to Eq.…”

Pestivirus infection in reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)

“…They breed seasonally, however, their reproduction cycle may adapt to climate changes and access to food. The greatest threat to reindeer are predators responsible for the high mortality in particular among the youngest animals ( Tryland, 2012 ). The alterations of the climate, which may influence winter lichen pastures lead to the necessity of supplementary feeding.…”

“…The alterations of the climate, which may influence winter lichen pastures lead to the necessity of supplementary feeding. Additionally, fragmentation of pasture areas disrupts natural migration routes and increases the need of transport of reindeer by lorries and usage of motor vehicles such as four-wheel drive cars, snow scooters and helicopters in their herding ( Tryland, 2012 ). Modernization, changes of reindeer management, gathering of animals for censusing or sorting for slaughter, ear tagging, and veterinary care increases animal density and stress, and finally can lead to increased risk of transmission of pathogens ( Malmfors and Wiklund, 1996 ).…”

“…Reindeer were reported to suffer from foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), necrobacillosis, pasteurellosis, anthrax, brucellosis, paratuberculosis, infectious keratoconjunctivitis (IKC) and contagious ecthyma ( Gavier-Widen et al, 2012 ; Tryland, 2012 ). Some of the pathogens are endemic in reindeer such as Cervid herpesvirus 2 (CvHV2; das Neves et al, 2010 ), CvHV3 and R. tarandus papillomaviruses 1 and 2 (RtPV1, RtPV2) associated with IKC ( Smits et al, 2013 ).…”