January 24, 2022 - ALROSA’s Environmental Center has summed up the findings of its annual monitoring of reindeer migration, conducted with the help of radio collars. To keep the animals safe, the company is organizing crossing points with shallower slopes across infrastructure lines at its industrial sites, and is also drawing up plans for stopping traffic when the reindeer cross haul roads.

For a month after the start of the migration, ALROSA makes changes to its road transport schedule, including a complete ban on operations for drivers during certain hours. Drivers are given additional training and receive information on locations where reindeer may be crossing roads.

Monitoring in 2021 revealed that the animals’ wintering grounds vary from year to year, though the migration routes are basically the same.

During overwintering last year, the reindeer came to within 1-2 km of the haul road to the Verkhne-Munskое deposit but did not cross it. They did not enter the territory of the Udachny and Nyurba mining and processing divisions or the Molodo placer deposit of Diamonds of Anabar, ALROSA’s subsidiary.

Having begun migrating towards their summer pasturelands at the end of April, the deer reached the Lena River delta by the end of June, before crossing the Chekanovsky Mountain Ridge, where ALROSA helped to set up a nature conservation area in 2021. Known as the ALROSA-Rangifer-Chekanovsky Reserve, it covers an area of 64,152 hectares.

Satellite monitoring of the herd’s movements is carried out using collars attached to individual reindeer by environmentalists in 2019 and 2020 and is designed to help preserve the Lena-Olenyok reindeer population and support the traditional way of life of the indigenous peoples of the North. The research began in 2016.

The Lena-Olenek reindeer population inhabits the western part of Yakutia, between the Lena and Anabar Rivers in the Anabarsky, Bulunsky, Oleneksky, Zhigansky, Mirninsky and Nyurbinsky districts. The herd population has declined over recent decades, but thanks to the efforts of scientists with assistance from ALROSA, this negative trend has now been arrested.