We spoke with EALAT Phd student Anna Degteva this week, while she is conducting her field work on the Yamal Peninsula. The Yamal Peninsula is home to the Nenets people and to the largest area of reindeer hubandry in the world.

Anna is a part of Work Package 2, 'Customisation of Pasture Conditions for Reindeer Pastoralism' and this summer is accompanying Brigade Number 4 on their Northward migration to the Kara Sea. Degteva's participation in EALAT has been made possible by a cooperation between the Sami University College, Kautokeino, Norway and The St. Petersburg State University, Russia, where Degteva is to be supervised by Konstantin Klokov.

Conditions for migration have been good, and calf production has been high. Brigade 4 is an interesting case as its migration route crosses the ever exapnding installations of Gazprom's Bovanenkovo Gas oil and gas field (See in Google Maps). Bovanenkovo is a key part of Russia's future energy plans and part of a multi billion dollar plan to extract and export natural gas by pipeline, rail and sea to Western Europe. The Bovanenkovskoe field, which after 2011 will produce a total of 115 billion cubic meters of gas annually, is the biggest in the Yamal, and a top priority for Gazprom.

The Brigade 4 Brigadier was also present during the EALAT Information seminar held in Yar Sale in the fall of 2007. 

Anna is Veps, and completed her MA at the University of Tromso, entitled '"Oil Industry and Reindeer Herding: The problems of Implementing Indigenous Rights in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia'  She followed this with a period of field work on the Yamal Peninsula in the ENSINOR project (about which you can read a report on the final seminar here on the Reindeer Portal. She expect to return from field work late August / early September.