Reindeer in South Georgia

The reindeer, a species of deer adapted to arctic and subarctic climates, was introduced to the subantarctic island of South Georgia by Norwegian whalers in the early 20th century.

[1] Initially, the reindeer were intended to provide recreational hunting as well as fresh meat for the numerous people working in the whaling industry on the island at the time.

Three males and seven females from Hemsedal in southern Norway were released at Ocean Harbour (then the site of an active whaling station) on the Barff Peninsula, on the northern coast of South Georgia.

[1] The Barff herd was relatively isolated from human access and increased rapidly in size before it outgrew its resources and declined in numbers.

The Busen herd, however, was much more accessible to the human population of South Georgia; its size was kept relatively low by regular hunting until whale processing declined and came to an end.

[3] Since the whaling industry ended in the 1960s, and those employed by it departed, South Georgia has been largely depopulated except for a small military presence, visiting scientists and occasional tourists from cruise ships or private yachts.

In 1971 the Royal Navy ship HMS Endurance collected eight deer from Corral Bay on the Barff peninsula with the intention of taking them to Navarino Island in Tierra del Fuego, Chile.

[1] Falkland Island resident Jerome Poncet collected some young deer during two expeditions in 2002 and 2003, using his yacht Golden Fleece, which had a shelter built on the stern deck.

[5] Because of the environmental damage caused by the reindeer, and the danger that glacial retreat would allow them to extend their range to other areas of the island, their permanent eradication was proposed, with the announcement of intention made on 19 February 2011.

The main limiting factor in the population was the availability of winter forage, as well as starvation; a significant cause of mortality was falls from cliffs while trying to access ungrazed areas.

Apart from South Georgia, the only other successful introduction was in 1954 to the subantarctic Kerguelen Islands, a French territory in the southern Indian Ocean, with ten reindeer from Swedish Lapland, which had increased by the 1970s to a population of about 2,000.