As climate change threatens subsistence in the Arctic, one village in Alaska is trying to transform reindeer herding practices into a sustainable business. Savoonga is one of two villages on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. The island is home to several thousand free-ranging reindeer, but climate change is making hunting less reliable. To help address that, the community is trying to increase commercial production and sale of reindeer meat.
“It would be nice to have our stores selling our local reindeer,” Perry Itegnaq Pungowiyi, who is a hunter and local worker, said. “It's hard to afford that steak, It's like $50, $60 for a piece of steak. And to me, reindeer tastes a lot better than steak.”
