Reindeer left hungry, shrinking in warming world Reindeer are shrinking. Warmer winters mean more rain. The rain falls on snow, where it freezes, thus locking-out the reindeer from the food beneath the snow. As a result, the reindeer starve, aborting their calves or giving birth to much lighter young. Credit: © Andreas Gradin / Fotolia Often portrayed as pulling Santa's sleigh, reindeer are a Christmas staple. Now, ecologists have found that reindeer are shrinking due to the impact of climate change on their food supplies. Speaking at the British Ecological Society annual meeting in Liverpool this week, researchers will reveal that over the past 20 years -- during a period of noticeable summer and winter warming in the Arctic -- reindeer on Svalbard have got smaller and lighter. Ecologists from the James Hutton Institute, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and Norwegian University of Life Sciences have worked in the high Arctic since 1994, measuring a...
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