It seems that scientists studying reindeer have found that the animals have lost weight over the past 20 years and are now 12 per cent lighter.
The Times reports this from the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting which said that reindeer numbers were up and that competition for food could be a factor as could warmer winters, which meant they could not forage on snowpack. The survey was conducted in Svalbard by ecologists from the James Hutton Institute, who found that weight had dropped from 55kg in 1994 to 48kg today.