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The Danish-Greenlandic Environmental Cooperation

Twelve stories about environmental projects in Greenland

Contents

The Arctic - a part of the world

Denmark has a long tradition of supporting environmental work in the Arctic. Collaborating with Greenland is part of this, and has always been a high priority.

The backdrop is sobering. Chemicals that are slow to biodegrade are carried toward Arctic latitudes from around the world. It is well documented that these substances accumulate in the food chain, and that high concentrations of environmental poisons occur in both humans and animals. Nature in Greenland and the huge untouched expanses signal something special to most people - an unspoiled environment. Partly for that reason, it is even more disturbing that we have concrete proof that pollution knows no boarders, and that many of the environmental problems of our time can only be solved through global cooperation.

In Denmark we have chosen to lead the way with a good example. In 1993, the Danish Parliament decided that Denmark would give environmental assistance to a number of countries and regions, among them the Danish part of the Arctic.

Today, the parliament still supports environmental assistance completely, and wants a greater focus on Greenland. Our goal is to create a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.

Environmental assistance to the Arctic is an important step. However, only when we can, for example, measure a decline in the accumulation of environmental poisons in the north, will we have accomplished much with our global environmental work.

Environmental problems in the Arctic and Greenland are not "just" something that come from outside - from other countries. The work done through environmental assistance to the Arctic has revealed that Greenland and the Arctic as a whole also create their own environmental problems.

Modern hunting technology and growing population levels put pressure on fish populations, birds and mammals. Modern lifestyles lead to problems with garbage, and to greater energy consumption, which brings with it the risk of increased pollution.

That is why part of the effort should also be focused on the sustainable development of local Arctic - not least, Greenlandic - communities, as part of an everchanging world.

Svend Auken
Minister for Environment and Energy

Greenland is dependent on nature being vital and healthy

For generations, harvesting from the country's wildlife resources has been of vital significance to the Greenlandic people. We have lived in and with nature. If the game animals failed to appear one winter, it could lead to hunger, and in the worst case, death in the settlement. Nature was vast, and hunting implements were limited in their reach. Thus, for generations there has been a balance between inuit and game animals. The hunt was sustainable, even though sustainability had not yet been invented.

Within in the space of a few decades, the transition to modern Greenlandic society turned this picture on its head. Population levels have exploded, and transportation and hunting equipment have been revolutionized. The modern hunter does not only have the family's food and clothing needs to provide for. Now the take must be increased so it can be converted into televisions, washing machines and other modern conveniences. Fast boats and good weapons bring with them an increased pressure on game animals. Political intervention is required to prevent this pressure from resulting in over-exploitation. Knowledge of population sizes, dynamics and migration patterns are decisive factors in the decision about how great the pressure from hunting can be. Balance in nature is necessary, if the hunt is to continue to be an integral part of the Greenlandic economy and a central element of the Greenlandic culture.

The transformation of the Greenlandic hunting culture also created a need for responsible management of the garbage that modern society produces. The Danish Greenlandic environmental cooperation has given us a boost with managing our own waste in Greenland. The Greenlandic municipalities have been enthusiastic about acquiring the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed for contemporary waste management.

Through the Danish-Greenlandic environmental cooperation, Denmark is working, on behalf of the whole Realm, for the industrialized world to take responsibility for the pollution that crosses all borders. The sea and the air around Greenland are good indicators of the environmental problems that will, like boomerangs, hit the countries that are the source of pollution. The ubiquitous environmental poisons are found especially in game animals. Here, environmental poisons are not just a scientific indicator, but an immediate health problem - known as the Arctic dilemma - for the Greenlandic population. A global solution to pollution will, therefore, have a significant beneficial effect on local health - in Greenland as well.

Alfred Jakobsen,
Home Rule Minister for Health and Environment

The protection of nature and the environment in Greenland

Through the Dancea assistance program, the Ministry of Environment and Energy supports a number of concrete projects working with nature and the environment in Greenland. These projects and their Greenlandic context are described in this book.

The Dancea projects are a substantial and practically oriented element of the Danish Greenlandic cooperation on the protection of the environment and nature. The Dancea schemes are based on shared responsibility within the Realm for protection of the environment and nature, as well as respect for the autonomy of Home Rule, and the particular Arctic conditions in Greenland. The environmental assistance program, Dancea, is part of the Danish follow-up on the UN goal of sustainable development - including the Arctic part of the Realm.

Greenlandic-Danish environmental cooperation

The Home Rule Government of Greenland assumed responsibility for the protection of nature in Greenland in connection with the establishment of Home Rule in 1979. In 1989, responsibility for environmental protection was turned over to the Home Rule Government, and in 1992, jurisdiction over the marine environment around Greenland within the three-mile inshore limit was given to the Home Rule Government.

Since then, the Greenlandic Home Rule Government has made a big effort to increase expertise in the environment and nature protection field. In connection with taking over protection of the environment and nature, Home Rule has established offices for both environmental protection and the protection of nature, as well as passing a number of laws, executive orders and so on in the field of nature and environmental protection.

After the handover to Home Rule, Greenland and Denmark have put both formal and informal contacts and networks in the area of nature and environmental protection into effect.

On the formal level, the Danish Minister for Environment and Energy and the Greenlandic Home Rule Minister responsible for environment have signed joint declarations on cooperation and the launching of a number of initiatives for the benefit of nature and environmental protection in Greenland.

Besides this, a contact group has been appointed, consisting of the directors of the Ministry of Environment and Nature in Greenland, as well as, in Denmark, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Danish Forest and Nature Agency, which meets once a year to discuss common problems, share experiences, and so on. The contact group and the yearly meetings have contributed to creating a number of informal but valuable contacts between Danish and Greenlandic government officials.

Polar bears are frequently killed in all parts of the hunting areas.

In connection with the Ministry of Environment and Energy's administration of assistance funding, the Minister for Environment and Energy, Svend Auken appointed the Advisory Committee for the Arctic in 1994, which advises the Department of the Environment on the administration of the assistance scheme, now known as Dancea.

Arctic environmental cooperation - AEPS, 1991

Environmental cooperation in the Arctic between the eight Arctic countries (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the USA) was formalized in 1991 with the passing of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS). The background for it was a growing concern for the Arctic environment, and the suspicion that winds and ocean currents carried dangerous substances from the industrialized countries to the Arctic. Since it was feared that these substances would accumulate in the Arctic population through the food chain, because of their traditional diet, Denmark and Greenland have participated actively in this cooperation since 1991.

Since then, Arctic environmental cooperation has expanded and become more concrete at the meetings of the ministers of environment in Greenland in 1993, in Canada in 1996, and in Norway in 1997. June 2001 marked ten years since the Arctic environmental strategy was passed, and Finland celebrated this occasion by holding a special anniversary meeting in Rovaniemi, the very city where the strategy was signed in 1991. Ministers and highly placed government officials from the Arctic countries participated. Besides this, the EU, the UNEP and observer countries also participated in the jubilee event.

In 1996, the Arctic Council was established. It was partly due to a wish from Denmark and Greenland that Arctic cooperation would, beyond environmental cooperation, include areas like economic growth, trade, hunting, education, transport and so on. The Arctic environmental cooperation and the Arctic environmental working groups continue as before, but now they are under the framework of the Arctic Council.

Hunting is one of the most flexible occupations in the world.

The Rio Conference in 1992

The year after the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) was passed, in 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro.

After the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the Danish Parliament decided in 1993 to follow up on the UN's goal by setting up the economic framework for Danish environmental assistance; known today as the Environment, Peace and Stability Facility. Since 1993, Denmark has increased its environmental assistance, and has decided to gradually expand the total economic framework to 0.5% of the Danish GNP by the year 2005.

Part of the assistance resulted in three programs under the Environmental Protection Agency: The Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic - Dancea, the Danish Cooperation for Environment and Development - Danced, and the Danish Cooperation for Environment in Eastern Europe - Dancee.

The Danish cooperation for environment in the Arctic - Dancea

In February 1994, the Government passed a "Sub-strategy concerning Arctic environmental protection schemes". The substrategy was based on the international Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), which was adopted by Denmark and the other Arctic countries in Rovaniemi, Finland in 1991. The main elements of this strategy include protection of the people of the Arctic, and an acceptance of a sustainable use of natural resources that meets cultural requirements as much as possible. The goal of the strategy is also to protect, reestablish and monitor the Arctic environment, with the aim of eliminating the pollution of the Arctic.

Since 1994, the concrete budgetary framework for Dancea activities has been continuously adjusted to the knowledge and tasks that are uncovered, partly by previous years' Dancea projects.

Dancea's overall purpose is still in keeping with the international Arctic environmental strategy, and aims, among other things, at the sustainable development of especially the Danish parts of the Arctic, with special emphasis on the sustainable use of Arctic natural resources, on conservation, and on the prevention and reduction of the pollution of the Arctic environment.

In connection with the parliamentary inquiry in May 1999, the parliament voted to redouble work in the Arctic, with a special focus on Greenland.

There are three focus areas. First, projects that build up and strengthen expertise in Greenland in the nature and environmental protection field, and in this way lay the foundation for the management of the environmental and nature, and a basis for implementation of a series of international agreements. Second, concrete schemes in Greenland, like the introduction of environmentally acceptable waste management and disposal. Third, but not least, support for information and teaching materials about nature and the environment.

Many of the projects chosen in this book deal with living nature and its utilization, but this only shows that Dancea has, over the years, supported a long series of projects in this area. The DanishGreenlandic environmental cooperation goes far beyond this and even covers important areas within the housing, energy and health sectors, as well as information and debatecreating activities. The stories chosen do not reflect the breadth of the whole enterprise.

In many parts of Greenland, fishery is still developing.

Hunters and scientists

Who should control hunting? What does sustainability mean with respect to reindeer, belugas or thick-billed murres? How are conflicts over the environment to be handled? Part of Dancea's environmental program supports activities that help solve local environmental problems.

"I get so furious when people say there's no debate on the environment in Greenland. If they debate anything here, they debate that. All the time. It is just that they don't discuss environmental questions the way politicians want them to," snorts Frank Sejersen, an eskimologist at the University of Copenhagen.

"I work with sustainability in general," says Frank Sejersen a bit more calmly, and continues, "Everyone uses the word sustainability, but they mean different things by it. I am trying to sketch out these different perspectives on sustainability. To show the differences, and to show why people talk past each other when we discuss sustainability and think we are all talking about the same thing."

Frank Sejersen is a scientist. And scientists are always in doubt. Are, on principle, never entirely sure.

"I have spent a lot of time in Sisimiut, because it is a place where the conflicts are very visible," says Frank Sejersen, "and that's just because there are so many different interest groups represented."

Let us take a concrete example like beluga hunting. Every one in Greenland is allowed to hunt beluga. That means that when you go on a beluga hunt, you'll meet the mayor, you'll meet a millionaire, you'll meet a hunter, and you'll meet a recreational hunter. Everyone. But they all have different reasons for needing this beluga. Some feel it is a right, that it is a question of cultural values. For others, it is simply something they enjoy doing. Still others say, "If I don't get this beluga, I won't be able to pay my bills." That is why so many conflicts arise on a beluga hunt. Who should get how much of the beluga?

It almost sounds like both fights and court cases could take place across the back of the whale.

"There has been the threat of fighting, and there's actually a recreational hunter who took a group of professional hunters to court because he thought he was not given his fair share," says Frank Sejersen.

The discussions take place on a local level. Frank Sejersen sees this as an advantage, because then the people themselves are in control. Another advantage is that there is a continuing debate. Fixed rules would trap people in categories. Flexibility would be lost.

Several hunting companies have been active in East Greenland. This is a hunting cabin in Kap Biot, Jameson Land. A polar bear has ripped the door off.

But, I ask, could that not cause the hunter who actually does live off hunting to be stepped on?

"It sure could," he answers, "but it could also mean the opposite. Who should have a right to the whales?" asks Frank Sejersen rhetorically.

Control over hunting

Hunters are organized in different ways. There are the local hunting and fishing associations (KNAPP), there is the umbrella hunting and fishing association (KNAPK), which takes care of negotiations with politicians, and there is the new organization of recreational hunters. The Home Rule Government is very interested in working with the hunters. It is not surprising when a central organization tries to collaborate with local representatives. But - as Frank Sejersen points out - they could also do the opposite, and delegate the responsibility to the local councils. The Home Rule Government could very well say "You can shoot 200 reindeer, but decide for yourselves how you will share them. In return, you also have to help monitor the population." And the system does not have to be the same from one local community to the other. That could easily turn out to be biologically and socially sustainable, but the question is whether the Home Rule Government will regard it as "politically" sustainable.

In short, the government - in this case, Home Rule - has its own ideas and assumptions about what is sustainable. Biologists have theirs. The local hunters still their own ideas and assumptions about how the hunt should proceed and be administered.

"My task," says Frank Sejersen, "is to sketch out the different strategies for sustainability."

The Home Rule Government is evidently very reluctant to set bans or quotas. That is what happened with the thick-billed murre, the reindeer, the fin whale, and the minke whale. In times of crisis, when hunters are hard-pressed economically, those controversies flare up again. In Sisimiut, one of the dividing lines goes between recreational and economic interests. The recurrent question is, therefore: What is socially just?

Tourist interests are a new aspect. Tourists could hire hunters. Go hunting with them, and then get a share of the kill. It must present new economic possibilities.

"I don't believe that," says Frank Sejersen flatly. "There are only a few hunters (outfitters) that could handle that. It actually requires quite a lot. Big investments. Training courses. Now that the purchasing power of the hunters is getting worse and worse, many people are setting their hopes on tourism as the business of the future. They imagine that it must be a good alternative to hunting. It goes along with our idea that hunters can take tourists out with them and act as local guides. But a simple thing like taking a tourist out on a boat, that's forbidden. To take a tourist out, you must have a certain amount of safety equipment. It is expensive and the boat becomes so heavy that it can't sail. Besides, there are probably only a few people who can speak the languages that the tourists require. And when you have paid for your trip, you want to be sure that the guide will be there when you arrive. It won't do any good if your nature guide has just gone hunting. It would require completely different priorities in daily life."

Frank Sejersen thinks picturing hunters as the new nature guides for eco-tourism is pure fantasy, and an alternative for very few during the short season.

Resources

Hunters talk about economic and social sustainability, while biologists talk about ecological sustainability. In principle, biologists are indifferent to who kills the whales. It is not their decision. They are interested in deciding what is justifiable, what is necessary, and what is fair. All conservation hurts, and that is probably why the Home Rule Government hesitates in many cases.

With beluga hunting, the idea so far is that all Greenlanders should be able to go whaling. At the moment, however, when there are so many problems, the professional hunter thinks it is unreasonable that his neighbour, who is a millionaire, can go out and get the same amount of beluga as he himself can.

The Home Rule Government has, for example, forbidden shooting whales from trawlers. Put simply, it means that trawler owners are told: Concentrate on what you are good at, fishing shrimp. That is where you get your income. Let others utilize the belugas.

Traditionally, hunters migrated after their game, either to summer hunting grounds or to completely new areas. It was a question of the family's survival, not of protecting the animals. Traditionally it was not a question of ecological sustainability.

Sustainability is a modern concept, which is based on certain basic ideas: 1. There are certain populations. 2. You must control your behavior so that you do not overexploit the population, and you must monitor the number of individuals in the population. 3. You are administering a resource.

The word resource itself is part of the modern perspective.

In the past, animals were seen as human-like beings that were reincarnated after you shot them. If he respected them properly, the souls of the animals returned to the hunter year after year in the form of new animals. You might say that an animal with a soul is a woolly idea. But so is a population. Have you, for example, seen a population recently?

Nevertheless, you cannot claim that hunting is sustainable just because it is done in the same way as in old times. That would not contribute to the debate about what sustainability is. It would show a lack of respect for both traditional and modern societies.

In the old hunting communities there was periodic starvation. We would not tolerate that nowadays. Secondly, the human population has multiplied. And we would not accept the necessity of moving because of game.

"It is a strength of democracy that initiatives can come from all sides," concludes Frank Sejersen. "It might be KNAPK (the hunting association), it might be local activists, it might be the Home Rule Government. If the topic is quotas, for example, it doesn't matter who starts the discussion. Before last year, no one mentioned quotas for belugas except biologists and people in nature management. But the administration of quotas, how to solve conflicts - there could be many ways of figuring them out! Why not be open to that?"

Debate and education

Frank Sejersen's research is paid in full by Dancea. Part of his research involves outlining the perspectives of different groups on sustainability - biologists, hunters, politicians, and so on. He points out that sustainability is a modern, forward-looking concept. That is why he thinks that it is important to map out people's visions of how the country should be used and protected.

He also works with the question of how biologists can incorporate local knowledge into their work.

Imina Imina, photographed at midnight in Siorapaluk, 1975. At that time he was 77 years old. He lived near Kap York as a boy and could remember Knud Rasmussen's arrival there by sled from the south on "The Literary Greenlandic Expedition."

Finally, he is writing a debate book on natural resource management in Greenland, and hopes to draw parallels to other communities, especially other Inuit communities.

Frank Sejersen remarks that the point on the Danish Environmental Protection Agency's program dealing with increasing environmental awareness in the Arctic could be perceived as an attempt by external powers to administer the use of nature in Greenland. At the same time, a growing number of Greenlanders want more discussion of the environment, and want environmental education for Greenlandic youth, who, like youth in other parts of the world, are becoming increasingly alienated from nature.

Belugas in rough seas

Biologists count belugas. Hunters live off of killing them. The authorities have to decide whether it is justifiable to continue hunting belugas on the same scale that it has been done for centuries.

Belugas in the pack ice. Belugas winter in West Greenland, and in late spring migrate north to the Thule area and Canada. In the autumn they migrate back in flocks.

The beluga is in focus. Quotas on how many belugas may be killed are being deliberated. The hunters disagree with the authorities. They think that there are just as many belugas now as there always have been, and accuse biologists of not counting properly. As usual, it is the politicians and the Ministry of Environment and Nature that will act as arbitrators in the on-going controversy.

In short, the management of belugas is a topical example of how sustainability will be practiced in the future. In the case of beluga hunting there are distinct seasons. In the spring, when the ice breaks, the whales migrate north from their wintering areas in West Greenland; from Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn) south to Nuuk (Godthåb). They follow the ice edge to the Thule area and Canada, and can be caught, in the cracks in the ice. Belugas stay up north throughout the summer months. In the autumn, they migrate back in large flocks.

"If someone sees a flock from the mountains or from a boat at sea, the call will go out to the whole village, and the VHF radios will sizzle with messages about the belugas," relates Bo Albrechtsen, director of the museum in Upernavik. The district is known as one of the places where many belugas are brought down, and where beluga hunting is very significant for the hunters' livelihoods. "Then all the hunters leap for their boats, which are usually ready with large of amounts of gasoline, cartridges and rifles."

In the spring, hunting is done in kayaks and from the ice edge. In the autumn, the hunt takes place on the open sea, where they shoot with powerful rifles, and if they are lucky enough to hit a whale, they hurry to it with a hand harpoon before it sinks.

No other hunting methods are used any more. No more blocking the whole mouth of the inlet, like they did in two places in Greenland during the thirties and forties. The corralling method that was used in the sixties and seventies, and especially in the eighties until 1995, is no longer used either. Belugas are herd animals, and are easy to lead. Just like with pilot whale hunting in the Faroe Islands, where a whole flock is driven into an inlet.

Driving was outlawed starting with the 1996 season. Belugas are now hunted using three methods: in the autumn, with what is known as 'open water nets', also in the autumn, from boats and cutters, where the belugas are hunted on the open sea, and in the spring from the ice edge, where the kayak is still a useful tool.

The kayak remains unsurpassed for spring hunting because of the distance out to the ice edge. The kayaks are carried by dogsled to the ice edge, where the hunters wait for seal, narwhale and beluga.

The spring beluga hunt in Greenland is done by kayak from the ice edge, in the autumn it is done on the open sea in boats.
  

As a museum official, Bo Albrechtsen is interested in how things were done in the past. "I have made some notes about how kayak hunters used to share the narwhale and beluga catch," relates Bo Albrechtsen. "There were clear rules about dividing the whale into five portions, and about which five persons would each receive his share.

First the mattaq - the skin, which is a delicacy, then the meat, and finally the bones. So traditionally, five families would share a whale."

It is completely different when a lot of whales are caught at once. There might be sales to seafood buyer ships or small local factories. There are none of the latter in the Upernavik area, though; factories there only buy Greenland halibut. Buyer ships purchase mattaq and meat from the hunters to sell along the coast.

According to Bo Albrechtsen, belugas and the situation of the hunters have been debated everywhere: on the radio and television, and hunters from the Upernavik district have also been in the daily press. A few local hunters were invited to Nuuk to participate in panel discussions, now that plans are being made for a clampdown - i.e. quotas - on beluga hunting. Representatives for biologists and for the authorities have held discussions in community centers, and so on.

During the twenty years that counts of the beluga population have been made, the population has decreased dramatically. In order not to neglect this, politicians will have to tighten control, which means setting quotas on belugas now.

But there will be consequences for local communities. Interventions by the Home Rule Government will change traditional ways of sharing whale meat. "I experienced it myself in a village up north where I lived when driving was banned in 1995," says Bo Albrechtsen. "Suddenly, the hunt and the sharing of meat and mattaq were no longer matters for the whole village."

All at once, the hunt and sharing of meat went from being a common affair to being part of the finances of the individual.

In the villages in Upernavik district, Greenland halibut, walrus and polar bear are purchased. There is a lot of money in these animals, like there is in belugas.

Should only fulltime hunters be allowed to hunt belugas in the future?
  

A medium-sized beluga (almost three meters long) can bring in 10,000 to 15,000 crowns, (c. 1200-1800 US dollars) and in the case of a big narwhale with a tooth, the earnings can be as high as 20,000 crowns (c. 2400 US dollars).

Timothæus Petersen is chairman of the local fishing and hunting association in Kullorsuaq, the northern-most village in Upernavik district. North of that stretches the icy wilderness of Melville Bay.

When Timothæus looked at my map of the area, he could see right away that it was out of date. The glaciers have melted away at such a pace that islands and new rocks have appeared along the ice front.

What is the hunters' perspective on the debate about belugas? "The biologists say that there are only 8,000 belugas left, and the hunters say there are more. We are the ones that see them when they swim passed Kullorsuaq," says Timothæus Petersen, and explains that in the spring they usually catch one or two belugas from the ice edge in Kullorsuaq. In the autumn, they sail out with boats after all kinds of things, but, "If we see a beluga, we call each other on the VHF's."

There are already quotas on how many fin whales and minke whales can be killed.

"The Home Rule Government will probably demand that we only shoot 400 belugas a year," says Timothæus Petersen, "but for our part, we have told the Home Rule administration that the biologists don't have proof. We think that it will take more than two years to do reliable counts. If we collaborate with the biologists on that, then we will be satisfied."

Walrus and polar bear are reserved for full-time hunters.

"If the Home Rule Government says that we can only shoot 400 a year, then we think that only the full-time hunters should be allowed to kill belugas."

Daily life as a hunter in Kullorsuaq consists of hunting seals, to put it briefly. This provides food for dogs and people, and skins to sell.

"We only sell Greenland halibut about four months a year; there isn't storage space for more," says Timothæus Petersen. "That's why the belugas are so important, because they bring in much more than seal skins. We have to pay the rent, telephone bills and electric bills. If we don't hunt beluga, we can't pay the rent."

Timothæus Petersen advocates waiting a few years before setting quotas, to find out whether it is true that there has been a great decrease in the number of belugas.

"We are not saying that we never believe biologists, but during the last two years, we have not cooperated much with them. If the biologists want to find out about belugas, we have to cooperate more than before. Biologists don't always believe the hunters, what we think about the belugas, and how many we think there are. But, in 1999, for example, the biologists came very late, and flew away very early. Before they came we saw belugas, and we saw them after they flew away.

"If the biologists want to know more about the belugas, they should come earlier and stay longer," finishes the chairman of the local fishing and hunting association.

The heated debate about belugas continues. A consultant on the beluga question is responsible for the Home Rule Government's points of view. His work consists of participating in discussions, whether they take place in the media or in community centers. A kind of traveling circular. The current consultant is Bjørn Rosing.

"I was out for just under two months this winter to convey the message."

"What was the message from the Home Rule Government?"

"It was that belugas and narwhales are going to be put under quotas in the near future. And I had to explain why they needed quotas set on them."

"What did you explain, then?"

"That the counts showed a marked decline. Since the beginning of the nineties, there have been recommendations to reduce the pressure of hunting on belugas."

"But the counts have been heavily criticized."

"Yes, they were, to put it mildly, very lively meetings. I have worked with more or less the same task for ten years. This was the fiercest I've seen. It is certainly not a way to become popular."

It is the mattaq - the skin of the whales - that is valuable. One piece of mattaq the size of this page costs about 200 crowns (c. 24 US dollars).

These discussions resemble very closely the state of war that existed in Denmark between the authorities and biologists on the one hand, and fishermen on the other. And just like with a number of fish species in Denmark, a quota will be set on belugas in Greenland, probably 400 whales a year, which is about half of a normal year's catch.

Pilot whale hunts in the Faroe Islands have been carefully recorded since 1650. Probably the oldest hunting statistics in the world. The pragmatic approach in the Faroe Islands is that if it has been possible since 1650 to take out the same number - on the average - year after year for centuries, then the population can bear it. I asked Bjørn Rosing if something similar could be imagined with the belugas in Greenland.

"Scientists don't think so," he answered. "They think that there has been a dramatic decline in the population." Greenland has hunting records from the 1860's. A lot has happened since then. Boats have become better; weapons have become better, etc.

"That's right," says Bjørn Rosing. "The outboard motor is brutal. Before the outboard motor, we would sometimes come back empty-handed. Now, with the outboard motor, we can cover a very big area, and it is very seldom that anyone comes home without a catch."

But the outboard motor is a doubleedged sword. Bjørn Rosing lived and worked in Upernavik from the late sixties until 1980. The outboard motor was forbidden the first three years; they did not want to disturb the seal hunt. When the outboard motor was accepted, belugas became rarer near inhabited areas.

Bjørn Rosing has seen signs that belugas have, to some extent, changed their range patterns. Previously, belugas have never been reported in Paamiut, but in the last few years, there is some information that belugas were seen there in the winter.

Being in the eye of the storm, like Bjørn Rosing is, gives insight into the worlds of both the biologist and the hunter.

On the one hand, he sees the problems researchers have: "For an animal to be declared an endangered species, the biologists almost have to lay bodies on the table."

On the other hand he recognizes that hunters do not have a lot of respect for scientists. "The track record is scary. A few years ago, they claimed that the last beluga would be dead by the year 2000. I can understand why the hunters object to the more austere interpretations of the counts."

When I point out that it is not a very tolerable situation that the hunters do not, to some extent, agree with the biologists, the Home Rule government's consultant answers: "A law will be passed, and they will have to follow it."

The climate in Zackenberg, Greenland, the world

In northeastern Greenland, in the middle of the largest national park in the world, there is a research station near Zackenberg, the former hunting station. The research station is funded by the Ministry of Information Technology and Research, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (Dancea), the Institute of Geography at the University of Copenhagen, and the Home Rule Government of Greenland. The purpose of the station is to study the effects of climate change.

The snowy owl lives mostly in the high Arctic. Sometimes it migrates far away, as in this case where a snowy owl was found completely exhausted in Kangerlussuaq (Sønder Strømfjord).

"Snow is the deciding factor," says Hans Meltofte from the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark, and director of the station for its first three years. He is currently responsible for the biological monitoring that is being done at the Zackenberg Research Station, which is located at 74°30' N lat on the east coast of Greenland, near Daneborg, the old weather station.

Even though the outer coast is only twenty-five kilometers away, this is a land station, and snow is the factor that determines pretty much everything. Determines how thick the ice will be in the fjord and on the lakes. Determines how many calves the musk oxen will have, and whether they will survive. Determines when the flowers bloom and whether they will have enough time to seed. Determines when the birds lay their eggs and how many chicks hatch. Determines the whole show. "Every one talks temperature. I talk snow," says Hans Meltofte dryly.

Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations (ZERO) consists of five wooden barracks and a few tents, which are the basis for a number of activities between June 1st and September 1st each year. The station has space for about twenty people. The activities take place within Zackenberg Valley and Store Sødal (another valley), in an area of 514 km2, which is defined by a watershed. Of this, a 40-km2 area is the object of intense study, the Zackenberg Valley itself.

In the time when fur trappers lived at Zackenberg, getting through the ice to the east coast of Greenland - if at all possible - could take weeks. Staying for the winter was unavoidable. No one could leave that part of the world in winter. The Zackenberg scientific station can only be manned every summer because the logistics are in order. There is a runway for small planes, a cook, a laboratory, a generator, a dinghy, and all the other trappings that are necessary for getting around safely in the field during the Arctic summer.

Right in the middle of everything

"Our point of departure is that we don't know anything about the annual variations in general living conditions in the high Arctic - whether it's Greenland or any where else." Hans Meltofte speaks categorically, and is basically arguing for the station, which was established in 1995, after fourteen years of discussions and three trips to northeast Greenland. The participants were geographers, logisticians, botanists, moss specialists, lichen specialists, entomologists, etc. Grants from the Aage V. Jensen Charitable Foundation and the Danish National Science Research Council made it possible to reconnoiter all of central northeast Greenland to study the places that were biologically most interesting. It could neither be an area with unusually high biological productivity nor a bleak area. In a desert-like area they would not get enough data. It could not be an oasis either, an unusually fertile area. The latter would probably react to climate change. "We had to find a place that was in-between everything," says Hans Meltofte. "Inbetween north and south. In-between too much snow and too little. Not too close to the sea and not too close to the inland ice."

The mountain on Clavering Island, seen from Zackenberg in the National Park

The Arctic and climate change

It is a unique station. Unique because monitoring programs were set up from the beginning to support each other and the many research projects. The basis for all activities is the climate station. That is, a set of data that shows whether a given research project is done in a normal or an unusual year. Not just with respect to snow cover, but also with respect to a number of other climatic factors.

Hans Meltofte points out that systematic climatic measurements are vital for the work at Zackenberg. He has personally worked in twenty different areas in high Arctic Greenland, including Peary Land, far to the north on an expedition with Eigil Knuth, and has experienced the frustrations of not knowing if the snow was especially abundant or scarce in the given area that year.

That is why Zackenberg, from the start, was set up with a climate station, a geographical program and a biological program.

The Arctic and climate change

The research projects done at Zackenberg are usually of a longer duration. That way, a number of projects can support each other. Time series will be developed that can shed additional light on the interaction of many different factors. Living organisms can thus be used as a kind of measuring instrument.

Because of experiences at the science station in Toolik Lake in Alaska, record is also kept of the impact that the research activity at Zackenberg has on nature. Partly keeping track of how many people there are in the field, and for how long. Partly coordinating their activities, so that the researchers do not, literally, plod over each other and mess up each other's measure ments. Some day, the human impact on nature will be able to be calculated.

The time factor is very important. There are no long time series that document what goes on under normal circumstances. Not to mention what happens when the anticipated climatic changes start making themselves felt. And they are expected to be most extreme in the Arctic. A rise in temperature from 31°C to 32°C in Borneo will not have the same effect on the ecosystem as an increase from 1°C to 2°C in the summer in northeast Greenland. And further increases in temperature will heighten the effects to disproportionately. The Arctic system is robust from an ecological perspective, but it reacts violently to climate change. We are at the outer limits of where life can exist. The whole fauna and flora only exist in the Arctic because they are resistant to climatic changes, but there are unrelenting limits for the survival of plants and animals. Big changes can have dramatic consequences.

It is because of these expected climatic changes that a research station has been placed at Zackenberg. At first, the intention was to study the effects of natural variation in climate. The station would probably never have become so big, nor the work so comprehensive, if the global discussion of the greenhouse effect had not come to the fore. When climate change became a hot political topic, interest in understanding the consequences of the greenhouse effect grew.

"Our aim is to reach a point where the studies done at Zackenberg can be used to say what we can expect if climate models are correct in predicting more precipitation and higher temperatures," says Hans Meltofte. "What effect will that have on the musk oxen, on birds, on insects and on the exchange of greenhouse gasses between the tundra and the atmosphere? At the same time, we will hopefully be able to see some connection between the climates of different parts of the Arctic. The climate models give different predictions for different parts of the Arctic. For example, it is predicted that climate change in East Greenland will be completely different than in West Greenland."

Zackenberg, the old hunting station, was inhabited by Danish marine biologists for a time.

Nature is not passive

Twenty percent of the world's organic carbon is sunk in the northern tundra regions. And an escalation of bacterial decomposition would release methane and carbon on a big scale. In the exchange between the tundra and the atmosphere, there are three important greenhouse gasses: water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane.

In a number of spots around the ice caps, the processes in the tundra are being measured. One of these places is near Zackenberg, where, each season so far, scientists from the universities in Lund and Copenhagen have been busy measuring carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane emissions from the soil layers over the permafrost zone.

The reason is that if the top layers of earth do warm up, it will put pressure on the permanently frozen soil underneath. That would mean an increase in the biomass that could release carbon dioxide and methane, the notoriously potent greenhouse gasses. By unit, methane is twentyone times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

The short version, then, is that when concentration levels of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, rise, the general temperature of the earth rises. The permafrost layer gets smaller, and methane emissions increase. This causes global temperatures to rise even more.

Studying the production of methane from the tundra, Zackenberg.
  

Full moon over the inland ice. The shape of the moon is distorted by atmospheric disturbances, Kangerlussuaq, West Greenland.

The whole truth is actually much more complicated. Nature is never a passive recipient. To put it differently, there are a great number of feedback mechanisms - some that augment the mechanism described above and others that counteract it. That is why it is necessary to register and quantify as many of the process that take place in the tundra as possible.

One example would be the methaneconsuming bacteria that live in the top aerated layers of the tundra. These bacteria are adapted to a certain concentration level of carbon dioxide. If this concentration increases, the bacteria lose their appetites. So in this case, an example of a boost to the greenhouse effect.

In an attempt to predict the future, the people behind the tundra project have covered over some trial areas. This increases the temperature. By simulating the climate change that may be coming with increased temperatures, they can study what happens to the development of methane in the top layers of soil under these new circumstances.

The station is devoted 100 percent to investigations of climate change. They are not concerned about whether the climate changes are natural or created by humans. There are already 2000 climatologists heatedly discussing just that. Instead, what they do here is to register what is actually going on. They measure. These measurements can then be used by the people that develop climate models.

The significance of Zackenberg, then, is that through it, Greenland is doing its part to support international agreements on monitoring the effects of climate change in Arctic ecosystems. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency regards the ZERO program as a substantial contribution to recording climate change and its implications for the Arctic. Zackenberg is, therefore, an important part of the Realm's contribution to the Arctic research program AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program), and the climate change studies associated with it.

Hans Meltofte.

Dancea will, therefore, continue to support the activities at Zackenberg, and to work for the long-term security of the station's activities as the contribution of the Realm to monitoring global climate change.

The sea ice is melting

The series of marine biological studies that the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark is doing in Young Sound, 25 km east of Zackenberg, is genuine cuttingedge research. Among other things, the studies focus on the circulation of carbon dioxide. The point of departure is that the average temperature of the globe has risen 0.3°C - 0.6°C during the last 100 years.

In Arctic waters, the sea ice is melting faster than before. Besides the reduction of the formation of new sea ice, large parts of the perennial sea ice have melted. As a result, there is less heavy salt-laden sea water than usual. This could have tremendous consequences on global sea currents.

The mechanism of the formation of global sea currents is as follows. In the Arctic oceanic areas, evaporation is greater than precipitation. As a result, the salt concentration of arctic sea water is very high. This, combined with it cooling, makes it sink, follow the sea bottom south, and create an excess of water in the Southern Hemisphere. This excess water flows back as less salty and warmer surface water, for example in the Gulf Stream along the west coast of Europe.

A general warming of sea water, by itself, would mean that the water would not be able to absorb as much carbon dioxide as before. Warm water can hold less carbon dioxide than cold.

The sea off East Greenland dominates life on land. But the sea is not a passive sparring partner. This is the basis for a study in Young Sound that is trying to uncover the parameters for and quantify the circulation of carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, through the biological systems, to sediment on the seabed. What is the scale of this movement of carbon?

But there are many intermediate calculations. As the ice melts, more and more light enters the sea. This increases primary production, i.e. algae grow and reproduce. This in turn means more food for the next link in the arctic food chain, etc. While algae in the open seas and seaweed on the seabed increase, living conditions for the ice algae that live in and on the sea ice degenerate. These are examples of conflicting changes in the marine environment. It is not yet possible to see what the final result will be for, for example, higher mammals in the Arctic like walruses, seals, and polar bears.

The projects in Daneborg started at the same time as the establishment of the station in Zackenberg. They were independent stations in the beginning, and are now being combined.

The financing is put together by the Ministry of Information Technology and Research through the Danish Polar Center, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (Dancea funds), the Institute of Geography at the University of Copenhagen and the Home Rule Government of Greenland.

The snows of Zackenberg

With respect to the musk oxen, luck has it that people from Sirius and from the weather station have been recording observations of them for forty years. They have done it very well. That means that it has been possible to process the data and see what has happened to these musk ox populations over the last forty years. In all of central northeast Greenland - from Zackenberg up to Lambert Land, the musk ox population collapsed in the early eighties in connection with the fall ice formation. So there are relatively few animals, especially in the coastal areas, where there was most ice formation.

Another core area is Jameson Land, directly west of the town of Scoresbysund, where about 300 are killed each year, which is what they calculate the population can tolerate.

In Zackenberg, they are looking closely at what winter conditions mean for the survival of a generation of calves in the first year of their lives. There is a population of about 250 to 300 animals in a relatively limited area, called Wollaston Forland and A.P. Olsen Land. Of these, 160 musk oxen are in the Zackenberg Valley itself, an important autumn feeding area for them. A lot is known about their age distribution, sex distribution, the yearly survival rate of the different generations, and of the animals' use of different areas. Among other things, the vegetation mass and the different types of vegetation are measured with satellite pictures and hand held instruments.

And so we come back to the snow and the long time series. Could they not just use satellite pictures? In principal, yes. The problem with satellite pictures is that just a fog pocket over the area the day the satellite passes would mean no picture. Besides, a satellite picture is confoundedly expensive. That is why there is a digital camera on the top of Zackenberg Mountain. With this snow camera, which is powered by a solar panel, pictures can be taken every day, even on overcast days - a service to the researchers, which makes Zackenberg something very special.

But the many other factors that influence the interaction of ecosystems must be studied one at a time.

Life-giving and lethal

Sunlight is one of the prerequisites of life on Earth. At the same time, the short-waved segment of the sun's rays can cause sunburn (UVA), destroy plant and animal tissues (UVB) and even kill (UVC). That is why it is so essential to pay attention to what is happening to the ozone layer, which protects us from UV radiation.

A set-up for exposing lichens to UVB radiation at Qaanaaq.

When the sun appears for the first time after the Arctic winter, it is duly celebrated. It has always been like that. But within a few weeks it can already be too much. The ice and snow can make the sunlight completely blinding. In a tanning salon, the UV radiation gives you a tan and the longwaved infrared radiation warms you up. Just like the real high-mountain sun.

First, some information that should be taught in school, but is not, unfortunately, even though it could well be decisive for the continuation of life on earth:

The ozone layer is located above the atmosphere in the stratosphere. Before humans started emitting chlorine and bromine into the atmosphere - from refrigerants, transformers, insulation materials, etc. - the ozone layer was thickest over the poles, and roughly equally thick over the North and South Poles. Chlorine and bromine emissions disturb the fine balance at the bottom of the stratosphere. Atmospheric movements around the North and South Poles respectively are decisive in this process.

Reindeer lichen, Cladonia mitis, thought to be damaged by natural UVB radiation, Qaanaaq.

The Antarctic continent is surrounded by huge bodies of water, which means that the strong air currents over the South Pole stay over Antarctica. This, combined with the extreme cold and the presence of chlorinecontaining substances, speeds up the breakdown of the ozone layer, which in turn increases UV radiation levels, especially in the early spring.

In contrast, on the Arctic end of the globe, there is a large body of water, of ice and surrounded by large landmasses. This means that the bodies of air are much less stable over the Northern Cap. Therefore the breakdown of ozone has not proceeded as fast here, though you might think that it would happen first in the Northern Hemisphere, because that is where the industrial societies - and thus chlorine and bromine emissions - are concentrated.

Ib Johnsen setting up a UVB screen on a heath of white Arctic bell-heather at Qaanaaq.

When the ozone layer erodes, more UVB radiation can get through to plants and animals on Earth. UVB rays are very aggressive, and very destructive to the genetic material in cells. These rays also destroy a number of enzymes, and significantly increase the risk of disease.

Alpine arnica (Arnica angustifolia) from northwest Greenland.

Because of the dangers of UVB radiation, the ozone layer is a prerequisite of life on Earth.

No sun filter

That is the background for Dancea helping to finance an investigation during the last few years into how Arctic plants react to the new situation. Ib Johnsen, from the Botanic Institute at the University of Copenhagen, says, "Plants used to be well protected against UVB radiation by the ozone layer in both Arctic and Antarctic regions. That means that plants and animals did not waste a lot of energy protecting themselves against UVB radiation. It was not necessary. The ozone layer took care of that. So they are very badly adapted to the new situation, where there is suddenly a lot more UVB radiation."

To illustrate this, various species of composites have been studied, among them the Alpine arnica (see illustration). It turned out that near the equator, all the plants were well protected against UVB, but in the same genus at northern latitudes, protection against the damaging rays of the sun did not seem as significant. Here, there was a wide and random variation with respect to protection against UVB. This was studied in the laboratory. The different species belonging to this genus vary widely in that respect. The closer to the poles you get, the greater the variation.

How do plants protect themselves against UVB? "Plants use two main techniques," continues Ib Johnsen, "the first is by producing a dye, a pigment, one of the ones known as flavonoids. These substances absorb UVB in the outer skin and prevent UVB from penetrating the layer of photosynthetically active cells. These pigments increase in concentration the closer we get to the equator, and decrease the closer we get to the poles. The repair process is another important mechanism. Plants can produce substances that can reassemble what UV radiation splits apart. That is, repair the damage that has occurred. Both ways require that the plant has certain reserves of energy."

Slowed growth

The question, then, is whether plants are damaged or changed by UV radiation.

First of all, the growth of the plants is slowed. The net primary production of the individual plant is reduced, as a biology teacher would say (see illustration, a greenhouse set-up). Secondly, the plants do not produce as much seed. That, however, does not mean as much in Arctic regions, because asexual reproduction is very widespread there.

Thus, the reduction of productivity is most significant.

Along with Henning Heide-Jørgensen, Ib Johnsen has looked at the sensitivity of lichens to environmental influences. Mosses are also sensitive, but they form the abovementioned flavonoids, which lichens do not. One would think that that would leave lichens unprotected, but it turns out that they produce lichen acids, which protect them to some degree from UVB radiation. "This may be a coincidence," says Ib Johnsen, "and since there is a big difference between the ability of lichen acids to absorb UV radiation, we can guess that the species, which, for whatever reason, have more lichen acids will be more dominating in the long run."

Lichens have been used to look at urban pollution levels. Are lichens also especially suitable for studying the effects of UVB radiation?

"Yes, if we want an early sign in vegetation of the damaging effects of UVB radiation, then it is a good idea to look at lichens," answers Ib Johnsen. "Lichens are active year-round. That is, they are also active in the very critical period when the hole in the ozone is especially big, in the spring months, before the snow has really melted. We must remember that lichens and many mosses are photosynthetically active at temperatures near zero or even below. They can actually photosynthesize under the snow before it melts. And we must remember that UVB radiation diffuses very easily. The sky is blue because short wave radiation diffuses best. The snow diffuses the light, and the UVB radiation comes from all sides, as it were. So when there is a lot of UVB radiation, you have some plants - the lichens, which are photosynthetically active and, therefore, a highrisk, group in that period."

A fine balance,

To understand why they are especially sensitive, it is necessary to know a little bit of the natural history of the lichens. The lichen is a double organism: a combination of a fungus and an alga. The alga photosynthesizes, and produces plant sugars, which it then delivers to the fungus. The fungus takes care of water supply and the salt that comes dissolved in the water. It is a very refined co-existence of two organisms, which is ancient - hundreds of millions of years old. The symbiosis is very finely balanced, and the risk of it being disturbed is very high.

In laboratory tests where lichens were exposed to UVB radiation, some external damage could be seen after an exposure that was not much higher than what normally occurs in nature. Besides that, there were also changes in the cells, a symptom of the plants using up a lot of the reserves they held in their cells. This leaves them badly equipped to deal with other stressful situations. In Greenlandic lichens, and in field experiments, similar observations have been made.

White Arctic bellheather at Qaanaaq with reindeer lichen, Cladonia mitis.

"I expect that the lichen group as such will be reduced. The ones that will remain are the species that, more or less by chance, are protected against UVB, because they contain lichen acids that protect them in the same way as the pigments of higher plants," concludes Ib Johnsen.

Environmental protection in Greenland

When you walk in the Greenlandic landscape, the terrain is almost entirely covered with lichens in many places.

Lichens live and grow for hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. The growth rate of lichens is known pretty certainly, because the same areas have been photographed at ten-year intervals, so it is possible to guess the age of an exposed surface from the diameter of the scab-shaped lichens on it.

If UVB radiation slows their growth, this method will not be useful much longer.

At the same time, it is a warning about the environmental factors that influence all living organisms.

If lichens do not grow as well, it can mean a lot for many animals. If, for example, reindeer lichens dwindle drastically, then we have to watch the reindeer populations and their reactions. The reindeer population is limited not least by its prospects for winter food, which consists primarily of the reasonably nutritious reindeer lichens. Thus, a decline in reindeer lichens can mean a decline in the reindeer population.

When the hunters go out in the early spring to hunt seal, the eyes of both the hunters and the seals are especially exposed.

"If I were Greenlandic, and interested in the protection of the environment, I would take this pretty seriously. I would not be so worried about changes in lichen vegetation. That probably doesn't mean so much. It will take a lot of UVB radiation to make it a big problem for the reindeer population. But I would be worried about human health, especially sight. The Arctic regions have significant increases in UVB radiation in the early spring months," concludes Ib Johnsen.

Thus, lichens can be used as measuring instruments to show some of the biological effects of UV radiation on some of the plants that are always out there. Lichens could be used as indicators. The damage in itself is not most important: it is the effects derived from it on animals and humans that are most important.

A healthy example of reindeer lichen, Cladonia mitis, from Tisvilde.  

Tiny animals of great significance

Datichopus groenlandicus.

Popular books on nature of all kinds fill many meters of shelf space in Denmark, and more keep coming. Nature for entertainment. Nature to expand consciousness.

In Greenland, field guides about different aspects of Greenlandic flora and fauna are starting to appear. The books that have come out so far have been about large animals. About birds, mammals, fish. The spectacular animals. But not a word on small animals, which are at least as important - like insects, for example. That's why Inger Hauge, editor at the publishing firm ATUAGKAT in Nuuk, has applied for and received funding from Dancea to put out a book on insects and other small animals in Greenland.

"Our point of departure is that people don't know anything about small land and fresh-water animals in Greenland. Our goal is to create the very first opportunity for interested people, who hike in the mountains in Greenland, to discover what you can find in nature," says Jens Böcher, who is the author of the book. He has spent the better part of a lifetime studying the insects of Greenland, particularly beetles.

There is a great need for field guides and other popular books on nature in Greenland. According to Jens Böcher, the situation is far worse than it was in Denmark fifty years ago. "At the same time," says Jens Böcher, "having worked with Greenland's insects for many years, it is for me a welcome opportunity to take stock of how far we've come. I have, for example, written a paper on Greenlandic beetles. This group of insects offers a lot to choose from. You can tell about their life cycle, their biology or occurrence in a completely different way than with, for example, flies and mosquitoes, which we know almost nothing about."

Odd, that neither scientists - smack - nor ordinary mortals - smack - are well acquainted with mosquitoes and flies. There is, then, a void to be filled by Jens Böcher's Insekter og smådyr i Grønland ("Insects and Small Animals in Greenland"). It is, in fact, a collection of information that is so far unknown to Greenlanders and others interested in Greenlandic nature.

Science for the man in the street

As it is, this information is found in many different scientific papers that are inaccessible to the layman. It is impossible for an ordinary inquirer to get an answer to any question about these animals. For practical reasons, a lower limit has been set at animals that cannot be seen with a magnifying glass. And it is not just a question of identifying and naming the animals. Take, for example, the high Arctic moth. It lives the greater part of its life as a caterpillar. Six years as a caterpillar, a few weeks as a pupa and adult. During its six years as a caterpillar, it spends the winter in places with sparse vegetation, often with almost no snow cover. Jens Böcher: "The caterpillar prepares itself for hibernation by forming sugary substances like glycerol. Equipped with these in its blood, it is able to tolerate its body fluids freezing, and it can survive temperatures as low as 70°C."

Jens Böcher.

The same principle used when you put anti-freeze in the car's cooling system.

Jens Böcher continues: "In the beginning of the seventh season it pupates. Its adult life is very short, about twenty-four hours. As soon as it emerges from the pupa, the fat sedentary female, with reduced wings and flying muscles, sends out scent substances that attract the male. A few hours after mating, it lays about a hundred eggs, often on the abandoned cocoon. None of the adults feed. The male dies just after mating, and the female, as soon as it has laid its eggs."

Like a film manuscript with a good director!

A parasitic moth, Pimpla sodalis. (Drawing: Vita Pedersen)
  

Tehama bonifatella, the western lawn moth, sitting on a marsh cinquefoil flower.

Jens Böcher is currently making an exhibition on insects in Greenland to increase people, familiarity with these tiny animals. "It is an attempt to get people to understand that it is a world of beauty and incredibly exciting experiences," says Jens Böcher. The initiative came from Georg Nyegaard, who is museum director in Qaqortoq

Insect life

Two of the most well known Greenlandic insects are the two species of bumblebees: Bombus polaris and Bombus hyperboreus. In the field, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between these two bumblebee species, but they can tell the difference themselves.

Jens Böcher: "There is a strange relationship between the two bumblebee species, since the B. hyperboreus is a nest parasite of the B. polaris. You never see B. hyperboreus workers, but B. polaris always produces workers, though fewer the further north they are. In the spring the B. hyperboreus queens come out from their hibernation later than the B. polaris queens do. When the B. polaris queen has built its nest and is starting to rear its larva, the B.hyperboreus queen forces its way into the nest, kills the B. polaris queen and takes over the nest. From then on the B. polaris B.hyperboreus queen and its brood, which only consists of drones and new queens."

The book Insekter og smådyr i Grønland is also part of a new view of nature. So far in Greenland there has not been any demand for insight into the world of insects, but nowadays nature is becoming and more nature-for-looking-at. The city dweller in nature.

"It is my secret hope," concludes Jens Böcher, "that people will go out in their areas and collect insects in their leisure time. That is what our knowledge about insects in Denmark has been built on.

" The high Arctic moth, Gynaephora groenlandica. (Drawing: Jakob Sunesen)
   

A spider, Larinoides patagiatus.

The dirty dozen

The most persistent pollutants are mainly produced and used in the industrialized parts of the world, but they reappear in concentrated form in the Arctic - in the air, and in plants and animals, both on land and in the sea. The first major comprehensive presentation of the state of the environment in the Arctic has just come out.

It is an impressive work. Thick as a telephone book. Eight hundred and fiftynine pages with chapters surveying the Arctic environment, drawn up in strict accordance with scientific method. On the accumulation of heavy metals. On the long journey that industrial and agricultural sprays make from southerly latitudes to the regions near the poles. On radioactivity in the Arctic environment. On how substances are interchanged among the living organisms on this shared planet of ours.

It started in Rovaniemi in 1991, when the eight countries that share the Arctic regions decided to start a common undertaking to measure and record the state of the environment in the Arctic: the AMAP project, which stands for the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.

The resultant Arctic Assessment Report came out in the summer of 1998, and is the largest and most in-depth comprehensive status report on the state of the Arctic environment ever made. Dancea financed the Danish contribution to this project.

Old acquaintances

Once you have been out in the sometimes unimaginably beautiful Greenlandic landscape, which Greenlanders and we visitors cannot help falling in love with, it is almost unbearable to read about the many pollutants that are stealing into what used to be pure and unspoiled nature.

One of the cornerstones of the report is a chapter on the persistant organic compounds that are used in industry and agriculture, mostly in the Western world, and which accumulate in the Arctic food chains. They are called POPs, which is short for "Persistent Organic Pollutants". The worst of them are known as "The Dirty Dozen" and include the all too familiar substances DDT, PCB, chlordane, dieldrin, and others. Substances that are produced, for example, to kill insects or other pests in agriculture, but which have gradually been found guilty of other types of environmental damage, even in the Arctic.

The principle of accumulation in Arctic  food chains is well known. What we do not know is how to stop the spread.

In order to describe the dissemination of POPs, how they develop over time, and their effects, we need to choose some animals that can be studied all over the Arctic. Key species. Since most of the food in the Arctic comes from the sea, AMAP has chosen the ringed seal as one of its key species. This seal is very common in the Arctic. It is hunted for its meat and pelt, and is an important food for the Arctic population. This makes it possible, by way of hunting, to get a large number of samples from the chosen monitoring areas to analyze, for example, for POPs.

Literature on the ringed seal describes it as fairly stationary. "But you should be wary of drawing hasty conclusions," says senior researcher Rune Dietz, who has researched the ringed seal and other Arctic animals for most of twenty years. "Satellite trackings have shown that the ringed seal does migrate around a bit. There is contact between Canada and Greenland. Seals that are, for example, marked in Qaanaaq (Thule), have been traced by satellite in Canada, and others have been found in Disko Bay. The ones that migrate are quite often young seals, so they are not as representative for a chosen area as the older seals. The older seals are more stationary, and only the wily ones escape hunters, nets and a number of other dangers."

Seal meat is used in hunting regions to feed both humans and dogs.

Ringed seals eat both crustaceans and fish, which have different concentrations of POPs and heavy metals. The proportions of these different groups of animal vary in different areas. "That is why food choice is a source of error, when you are evaluating the geographical or chronological development of POPs and heavy metals," says Rune Dietz.

The same in sum

The most important point in the evaluation of the development of POPs in recent years is their persistence. That is to say, it takes an extremely long time for them to break down into harmless substances. If we look, for example, at the well known spray DDT, it breaks down to DDE and then to DDD. These degradation products are also harmful; they are also among the POPs. A study of marine mammals, from 1982 to 1996, revealed that the concentration of DDT in beluga blubber had fallen, but that the concentration of the degradation product DDE had risen accordingly, so that the sum of DDT and DDE was the same through out the period of study.

The same was true for PCB and its degradation products, while a third member of the dirty dozen, chlordane increased significantly.

The AMAPŽs The Arctic Assessment Report also maps out dispersal pathways. It describes how concentrations vary across the Arctic regions. It attempts to illustrate the development over time, as well as the biological effects on plants and animals.

POPs are measured on land, in the sea, and in the air. Air samples are continuously being analyzed from Svalbard in Norway, Ellesmere Island in Canada, the Yukon in Alaska, and the Lena River in Siberia. HCH, a substance that is used as an insecticide in the cotton industry, is being studied in the Mackenzie River in Canada, in three Norwegian rivers, and in the Ob and the Yenisey in Siberia. All the studies indicate that the chlorine-containing environmental poisons come from former and current use of POPs in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and that these substances are transported to the Arctic by sea currents and winds.

Seal meat is a major part of the diet in some parts of Greenland.

Worst in East Greenland

A study of land animals, plants, birds and marine mammals from Alaska and Canada in the west, to East Greenland and Svalbard in the east, would reveal a clear increase in of PCB, DDT, and HCH concentrations from west to east. In Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) in East Greenland, ringed seals have higher concentrations of PCB and DDT than ringed seals in West Greenland do. The highest concentration ever was found in the Yenisey, a Siberian river.

The same is true of polar bears. The concentration of PCB in polar bears is significantly higher in East Greenland and Svalbard than in other places in the Arctic.

While heavy metals each follow a path through the food chain, and have certain organs they tend to accumulate in, POPs attach themselves to fat. To begin with, POPs can be grouped together and regarded as a whole. Different organs have different fat contents. When this is taken into account, roughly the same concentration levels are found in the different organs.

"POP concentration levels in ringed seals are not far from the threshold limiting value, but they are nothing compared to the concentrations found in seals in the Baltic, where they can be ten to a hundred times worse," says Rune Dietz, and continues, "Still, it is a problem in the Arctic, because seals are such an important part of the diet in Arctic Canada and parts of Greenland. It is not a problem for the inhabitants of Svalbard and northern Russia, because the ringed seal does not dominate their diet."

Polar bears, which eat only the fat of the ringed seals, get big doses of POPs. In polar bears, concentrations are perhaps twenty times higher than in seals. Studies done in Svalbard have shown that the immune systems of the polar bears are under pressure. The higher the PCB concentrations are, the greater the strain on the immune system.

For investigating direct physical damage, the bears would probably be more interesting to study than ringed seals, but scientific interest alone cannot justify going out and shooting twenty-five polar bears in different areas.

With respect to the effects of POPs on ringed seals, Rune Dietz says, "We haven't found any hermaphrodites among the ringed seals. If we want to look for conspicuous changes, we have to go one link up on the food chain, and study whether there are any effects on humans and polar bears." That is why a study of polar bears has been started. Hunters in Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) are being paid to take samples from a hundred bears in all. These samples have almost all been collected. They will be studied closely during the next couple of years.

The daily dose

The internationally set threshold limiting values for substances injurious to the environment are one thing. How the concentrations vary over time is another. The limiting values are not so important as long as concentrations are declining. And conversely, if the concentrations rise continuously, then any threshold limiting value will be exceeded. It is only a question of time.

It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the results of the Arctic Assessment Report. The Swedish time trends are the best. They showed some pronounced drops in POPs during the 1970s, followed by a lessening decline.

In the Arctic, there are some places where concentrations have fallen over time, and other places where no conclusions can be drawn. In a few places, concentrations are actually rising.

Meanwhile, there are many intermediate calculations to be made. The males accumulate POPs throughout their lives. The females are different. A female will build up a certain concentration level in her body through her life. But when a female has her first-born, it will get a huge dose, while the mother's POP concentration level will decrease as she produces the high-fat mother's milk. Some female whales breast-feed their young for 11/2 - 2 years.

According to the magazine New Scientist, a Greenland whale has been studied and found to be 212 years old. This recordholding animal was born before the French Revolution! That means that these animals have been accumulating environmental poisons through out the period in which they have been produced. At the same time, these animals have only lived to be this old because they are extremely cunning, and must, therefore, contain a valuable gene pool. The Greenland whale has been protected since the 1930s, and has not recovered yet.

The problem, at the moment, is that it would take about seven or eight years, perhaps longer, of collecting samples to be able to conclude anything about the development over time. Expecting scientists to give a reasonable answer now on where things are going with respect to pollution concentrations in Greenland is like trying to predict how the national team will do in its next soccer match. New players keep appearing. Some are replaced during the game. And, most importantly, the opponent is not passive.

The same is true of the interplay between nature and pollution: nature is not a passive sparring partner. The data from Canada is a bit better. But even in Canada the time trends are not clear. Five years is a long time from a purely political point of view (though not for a Greenland whale). In a scientific context, longer periods are often necessary. This is especially true of time trends for POPs. An event of global significance took place in Stockholm in May 2001. The UNEP convention on POPs was signed, and "the dirty dozen" - the twelve worst POPs - were banned. However, it will be a terribly long time before the effects of this ban can be traced in the Arctic. It takes something on the order of several hundred years for these substances to circulate with the sea currents in the Arctic Sea.

Greenlanders, environmental poisons and being overweight

Among polar bears, the ones in East Greenland and Svalbard have the highest levels of PCB in the world. Greenlanders hold the same record for people. Two unfortunate world records.

Polar bears and humans are top links in the food chain. The reason that polar bears in some parts of the world have extremely high concentrations of POPs may be that they live mostly off seal blubber. POPs accumulate especially in fatty tissues. If humans eat seal blubber very often, then concentration levels comparable to those in polar bears could be expected. But if the people living in hunting areas eat polar bear meat fairly regularly, then it could not be worse with respect to consumption of substances that are suspected carcinogens.

"We do not have proof that there are problems among the population of East Greenland that come from high POP concentration levels. But if problems do arise, then Greenlanders will be among the first to be hit," says Henning Sloth Pedersen, medical officer of health at the primary health care clinic in Nuuk. He has just been to Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) and Tasiilaq (Ammassalik) as leader of a current study of POP concentration levels among the population. The study is part of the health program under the AMAP and is financed by Dancea.

In 1998, fifteen people were examined in Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund). This pilot project revealed that the pressure on marine animals and people is about the same. This is to be expected, since humans and polar bears, for example, share the same place in the Arctic food chain.

A high participation level

Based on this study, a proper scientific investigation was to be done to establish whether the warnings from the pilot study held true. It was decided that Tasiilaq (Ammassalik) would be included as well, because the supposition was that there is more pollution on the east coast than the west coast.

Fast food has become a part of the weekly diet of many Greenlanders.

In a study like this, it is crucial that the people examined are chosen randomly, and, not least, that they actually show up. This was not the case in earlier studies done in Disko Bay, where participation was sometimes as low as twenty-five percent.

"The only way to get high participation is to go out yourself and tell people what the study is for. People usually don't mind participating. On the contrary," says Henning Sloth.

In both Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) and Tasiilaq (Ammassalik), fifty men and fifty women of childbearing age (18-45 years old) were chosen. Chosen in a statistically correct way by Statistics Greenland.

"Then I went to Scoresbysund," tells Henning Sloth Pedersen, "having gotten the phone numbers I could get, and found out who people were ahead of time. I contacted each one of them on the phone or at work, or visited the rest. We have bad experiences with sending messages by post or messenger. It is as if it is more serious when the doctor comes himself. People know me, because I have been here for many years and speak Greenlandic."

The result was a participation rate of ninety-seven percent! The study consisted of an interview of twenty to thirty minutes on eating habits, tobacco, alcohol and other living habits, work, education, family relations, housing. Factors that reflect lifestyle and living conditions.

"I'm the one who does all the interviews," explains Henning Sloth. "Partly so that the research is done uniformly, and partly to make sure people have understood the questions completely."

Height and weight were also measured, and blood samples were taken. The blood samples were tested for POPs, and for fatty acids that reflect diet. At the same time, the immune system was studied, as well as the balance between different hormones. If men have high concentrations of female hormones, it is as if they were taking contraceptive pills that lowered their fertility. The same is true of women if they get hormones that resemble birth control pills, since several POPs have estrogenlike effects.

Threshold limiting values

The results were frightening. To evaluate how bad things really are, the results can be compared with the Canadian threshold limiting values (the Danish authorities have not set independent limits, but use the Canadian ones). The Canadians use the terms "concern limit" and "action limit." Pregnant women are the most sensitive segment of the population.

The investigation confirmed entirely the pilot study of 1998. POP concentrations are very high both in marine mammals and among the population of Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund).

Smoking

A study from Uummannaq covers some other aspects. The study was done in the summer of 1999 and included fortyeight men from the ages of thirty to fifty in two villages. They were all full-time or parttime hunters, and all healthy, that is, they all had the same level of physical activity, meaning they probably ate the same amount of food.

To everyone's great surprise, there were quite a few who had never smoked, fourteen in all. Earlier studies have found very few non-smokers and people who have never smoked.

The Uummannaq study is unique, because it is the first study of two groups that were the same, except for smoking. It should be noted, though, that it dealt with a select few, and was a small sample, and for these reasons the data should be interpreted cautiously.

It is probably well known that you gain weight when you stop smoking. Conversly, nicotine is used in diet pills. That is why the results were skewed by the fact that those who had never smoked weighed, on the average, 10 kg more than the smokers. They have the same constitution. They have the same level of activity, but they weigh 10 kg more, a difference that is, assumedly, made up of fat. That is where the dilution problem comes in, because POPs accumulate in fat. If you have 10 kg more fat, then your POP concentration will be correspondingly lower. The same phenomenon is seen in seals, where the POP concentration level in a summer seal can be fifteen times higher than in a winter seal. That means that if someone has a high POP concentration level, it may be because he or she has eaten lean summer seals.

Girl chewing the fat off the inside of the skin of a little auk.

In a study in Canada, people lost weight in controlled circumstances, and their POP concentration levels rose at the same time. Another undiscovered source of error. Despite this, it still seems that tobacco has an independent effect.

Another variation is when a mother breast-feeds her child. The child receives a high concentration of POPs, while the mother's POP concentration level falls. The same is true of mother animals and their young.

It seems that especially polar bears, which live off seal blubber, have extremely high concentrations. According to hunting statistics, polar bear meat is a pretty big part of the yearly meat consumption in Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund). There are some indications that the highest concentrations in people in Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) are due to polar bear meat.

Eating Greenlandic food

"But one thing that really surprised me in Scoresbysund was how little Greenlandic food people ate," says Henning Sloth Pedersen. "And that has happened in the last five years. About sixty percent of the population has Greenlandic food as a main meal less than once a week. The ones that eat the least Greenlandic food are significantly overweight, because the things they eat instead of Greenlandic food are of bad quality. We can see that on the diet questionnaires. The same is true of the hunters in Uummannaq, where more than fifty percent of those who had never smoked were overweight, despite a high activity level.

Ammassalik is different

Compared to Scoresbysund, people have a healthier lifestyle in Tasiilaq (Ammassalik).

"Seventy percent of the population is not overweight." Henning Sloth points this out as the most important. "They eat Greenlandic food at least once a month. Smoke less than the national average. The last twenty-five percent, who were unemployed, were more difficult to get in touch with. They ate very little Greenlandic food, were overweight, and smoked."

There is a striking difference between these two populations on the east coast.

So when people stop hunting and stop all the activity connected to hunting, they eat less Greenlandic food.

Caribou and musk oxen are meat and adventure

Both caribou and domesticated reindeer are utilized in Greenland. Musk oxen are only used as game. Shooting a musk ox provides four times as much meat as a reindeer. But Greenlanders prefer reindeer meat.

Is it better to count on domesticated reindeer ranching or on hunting wild caribou?

Caribou live on the west coast of Greenland, from Paamiut (Frederikshåb) to Ilulissat (Jakobshavn). There are eight or more small isolated herds.

Domesticated reindeer are raised in Bredefjord. The reindeer ranch is in Isortoq. There are 5000 reindeer in the winter flock. Two families, in all seven or eight people on a yearlong basis, live off the reindeer. One of the owners was apprenticed in Godthåbsfjord, when there was reindeer ranching there. A hundred animals from the herd at Godthåbsfjord were moved to south Greenland, where a number of facilities have since been built. There are a slaughterhouse, corrals, vehicles, and for emergencies, a helicopter. Profits have gradually been invested in more facilities. Last year, a couple of thousand reindeer were slaughtered. The business started in 1973 in Bredefjord, now the only place in Greenland with a domesticated reindeer ranch.

The domesticated reindeer came originally from Norway to Godthåbsfjord. Here they mixed, to a certain extent, with the caribou. However, the herd in south Greenland was started before there was much mixing. The Bredefjord herd is therefore a very pure reindeer herd; the descendents of the original Norwegian domesticated reindeer.

"Domesticated reindeer look more variegated than caribou," describes Josefine Nymand. "A difference which fades, though, as time passes. It is clearest on the calves whether they are of caribou or reindeer stock. But it probably won't be too many years before this difference also disappears." Josefine Nymand is Greenlandic and is working on her PhD, a title that normally leads to work as a researcher. She is associated with the Dancea-supported projects at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. At the moment, Josefine Nymand is trying to uncover the myths and realities about the lives of reindeer and caribou.

Domesticated and wild

Domesticated reindeer live like caribou, except in the fall, when they are rounded up for slaughter.

The pressure on the reindeer comes from parasites, especially botflies and warble flies. These parasites affect the welfare of the reindeers and the value of their meat and skins.

"Experience with reindeer ranching in Norway shows that if the animals are treated for warble flies, then the meat weight of the calves increases. The animals get bigger and heavier," explains Josefine Nymand.

If the animals are well fed and in good condition, then they will not have many botflies and warble flies. If they are healthy, then the skins will not really show anything either. Even if they have warble flies that bore through the skin in the spring, the holes will close up again if the animals are in reasonably good condition. In bad times, pressure from parasites is relatively more important. But it can be difficult to tell if an animal has died because of starvation or parasites.

"The parasites are more significant when the botflies and warble flies swarm around the animal," continues Josefine Nymand. "Botflies have to squirt their eggs into the animals' noses, and warble flies have to find a place to settle on the legs to lay their eggs. It disturbs the reindeer while they are foraging. They flee from places like that, and reduce their consumption of food by a few hours because they have to get away from the insects."

The problem is the same for the caribou. The parasite was introduced by the domesticated reindeer from Norway in the 1950s, and has spread to the caribou since then.

Originally, before 1950, the Greenlandic caribou population was the only one in the world that did not have parasites. All other caribou and reindeer populations had parasites, and lived with them. Greenlandic hunters say that they could see the effects on the caribou population after they were infected with parasites.

Catastrophic climat

Mild winters can also have catastrophic consequences for the reindeer and caribou populations. If there is a föhn wind that melts the snow, followed by periods of frost, it can be difficult for the reindeer to scrape their way down to their food. This is typically a local phenomenon. Real catastrophes usually only happen if the previous summer has not been good. If the animals do not become big and fat during the summer, and then a mild winter follows - first thaw, then frost - there can be many fatalities. A cold wet autumn followed by a long hard winter with deep snow can also be catastrophic.

In Bredefjord, for a period, there were altogether too many animals. The reindeer lichens have disappeared, except in some parts of the wintering areas. For that reason, the animals were transferred so they would use new wintering areas. Now the reindeer migrate themselves, but there is still a problem with overgrazing.

"But when the reindeer are going to calve, ten wild horses can't keep them away from their calving areas," says Josefine Nymand. "The Greenlandic domesticated reindeer are incredibly stationary. That is also true of some of the caribou near Sønder Strømfjord. They do not migrate as much as you might imagine. They stay in the same place both summer and winter. It is only the calving areas that really draw them."

Regulation

The Greenland Institute of Natural Resources estimates that there are about 142,000 caribou in all of West Greenland. In the spring of 1993, the population was estimated to be as low as 10,000, which was the reason that they were totally protected from 1993 to 1994.

"We were caught off guard, both biologists and administrators," says Peter Nielsen, Head of Office at the Ministry of Environment and Nature. "When we did the total ban in 93-94, I was completely convinced that we were doing the right thing. Everyone knew that the caribou population was very low. It could well be that we did not get the numbers right, that we were too pessimistic, but still, it was very low."

At one point - in 1990 - people thought that there were too many animals with respect to vegetation. "For the time being," continues Peter Nielsen, "I will take all statements on the relationship between vegetation and the number of caribou calmly, and wait for more thorough analyses. It is hard to believe that the vegetation is over-exploited while the population is growing as quickly as it has been."

Before the ban, the caribou population was only regulated at certain times. If you were a professional hunter, then you could kill as many animals as you wanted. If you were a part-time hunter, you could kill eight, and if you were a recreational hunter, you could kill three. But when hunting started again after the ban, there were quotas.

Very strict and conservatively set quotas.

Last year (2000), there was a great deal of dissatisfaction about the distribution of the caribou quotas. In Nuuk, the recreational hunters had to draw lots on the animals that were allocated to them, so that not everybody who wanted an animal got one. Professional hunters were allotted twenty-five, which was actually more than they could manage to hunt or sell. As a result, the quota was not very well taken advantage of.

Besides that, there can easily be different ways of arranging things in the different cities and villages. The municipal governments allocate the quotas as they see fit.

The hunting experience

Is the amount of caribou meat provided by the hunt really significant to the diet of the local Greenlandic population? A simple calculation shows that the quota this year, which is 24,000 caribou, would provide about 800 tons of meat (an average caribou carries 35- 37 kg of meat). That means that each Greenlander would get more than 15 kg of meat a year if the meat were distributed equally.

There are more than 5000 musk oxen in Kangerlussuaq (Sønder Strømfjord), and more than 1000 are killed each year, which the population can take. Some musk oxen are killed by trophy hunters and tourists.

"But the experience is just as important," points out Peter Nielsen. "It is simply the most wonderful part of the year. The trips in for the caribou hunt in the beautiful autumn weather have a great social and physical meaning for people's wellbeing. It has many functions."

All caribou is eaten in Greenland. Domesticated reindeer meat can be exported, because it is butchered in an EUapproved slaughterhouse in Narsaq.

The musk ox hunt

Trophy hunting of musk oxen started in the 1990s, though not without friction between professional hunters, part-time hunters, and trophy hunters.

"We know the problem from Kangerlussuaq," says Peter Nielsen, "where professional hunters leave first, followed by trophy hunters. When lots of dogsleds and snow scooters have been over the terrain before the trophy hunters come, then it is difficult to sell the illusion that this is unspoiled nature. The professional hunters hunt in a different way than the trophy hunters prefer. The professional hunters are more straightforward about their killing methods. It is more no-nonsense, while for the trophy hunters, going out and choosing exactly which animal they want is a big part of the enjoyment."

There are two periods of musk ox hunting: the autumn hunt, which coincides with the caribou hunt, and the winter hunt. The autumn hunt always involves sailing, and the hunt takes place near the coast. Still, it is hard work, because the meat of a musk ox weighs about 100 kg (the biggest are up around 150-160 kg). Because of the long and difficult transport, the meat is not always of good quality.

Most of the winter hunt takes place as close to the inland ice as possible, so the hunt is divided between the autumn hunt near the coast and winter shooting further inland. Also, the snow can be used to drive dogsleds and snow scooters on.

For thousands of years, musk oxen have had to defend themselves against wolves. For that reason, the herds take a defensive position with the musk bulls in front facing the danger. But this behavior is problematic, because the rest of the herd stays still, even when one of them has been killed. Is it necessary to take down the whole heard?

"It is possible to shoot single animals, so it is certainly not a rule that the whole heard should be killed," says Peter Nielsen. "When the hunt for musk oxen started, people were interested in the bulls first, because they thought there were too many of them. But now both bulls and cows are taken down."

Musk ox or caribou?

A slaughterhouse in Sønder Strømfjord has been established where a large portion of the musk oxen that are shot in the winter are butchered according to regulations, and can be exported to the EU.

Musk ox hunting is shared between the hunters in Manitsoq (Sukkertoppen) and Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg). There are some problems with that, because the traditional boundary for dogsledding is located between the two municipalities. The overlap of the two different traditions gives occasion to peevish remarks from the dogsledders, relates Josefine Nymand.

Today, there are more than 5000 musk oxen in Kangerlussuaq (Sønder Strømfjord) and more than 1000 are killed each year. Caribou and musk oxen can live side by side. The musk oxen go down in the valleys to the good grazing areas; the caribou go higher up, where the nutritional content of the grass is lower. The caribou give way to the musk oxen.

If you ask Josefine Nymand whether there is more meat per hectare when both musk oxen and caribou are in an area, she answers, "We don't know. But one deciding factor is that Greenlanders would much rather have caribou or reindeer meat than musk ox meat. So if Greenlanders could get used to eating musk ox meat, there is no doubt that it would be more advantageous to harvest from the musk oxen population in Sønder Strømfjord."

Slipshod workmanship from Viking Times

The church ruins in Qaqortoq are preserved for the future. Dancea and the A.P. Møller Fund have secured the ruin with a thorough restoration. The walls of Hvalsey Church were built of beautifully fitted ashlar. The foundation, though, is a disgrace.

The east gable of the Hvalsey Church ruin. As early as 1721, Hans Egede, on his trip to south Greenland, noticed that the south gable was giving way.

The reason the ruin is still standing where Hvalsey Church was first built in the 1100s in Julianehåb district (Qaqortoq), is because the church was built of stone. This is unique. Churches in Iceland from the same period disappeared a long time ago because they were built of wood or sod. The lack of trees in Greenland has meant that the Hvalsey Church ruins are now a candidate for UNESCO's World Heritage List

We're talking very big stones. Some of the stones weigh four or five tons; a few are even heavier. The wall is about a meter and a half thick. The stones in the church wall were chosen so carefully, that it was possible to build a solid stone wall by inserting stone chips. Archeologists and building experts are still discussing whether lime mortar was used to cement the stones together. Mortar was used, that much is sure, but perhaps only for grouting. "It seems as if they either had to conserve mortar or that they were not very confident about its carrying capacity," says Søren Abrahamsen, consulting engineer and the driving force behind the whole process of straightening up the falling ruin in Qaqortoq. In any case, the stones were chosen and fitted meticulously.

Restoring the ruin

Restoring a ruin is a delicate task. The church is not to be rebuilt, just stabilized as a ruin. It will not, then have a roof built on it. But is it "cheating" to use modern methods and modern materials? During the restoration of the ruins of Kalø Castle near Rønde on Djursland there was not enough of the original brick. The modern bricks that were used where they were needed are very conspicuous. In Hvalsey, local stone could be used, but the difference between original stone and later stone would be apparent, though not as obvious as with the bricks in the Kalø Castle ruins. This is partly because lichens grow on the side of the stone that faces up when lies on the ground. Nature's own patina. Søren Abrahamsen and others that have investigated the Hvalsey ruin over the years have recorded which stones are original and which have been fitted in at different times in an attempt to stop the south wall from giving way.

The danger of it falling has been noticeable for several hundred years. In 1828, first lieutenant of the army, W.A.Graah, complained that, "Presumably, it is due to the sinking grounds that this wall started tilting, it will hardly be able to resist the ruinous wind for another half century." As much as the prevailing east wind, it is water that has undermined the church. The south wall clearly leans furthest just where the greatest amount of water runs under the church.

The sinking of the south wall probably started very soon after the church was built. At its worst, the south wall tilted 52 cm. The cause: an unsound foundation. In some places the turf had not even been removed. And as the graves that the church was built over gradually collapsed, the south wall of the church followed. Though attention has obviously been lavished on the details on the visible part of the church, the foundation is slipshod work. All in all, it is a case of poor workmanship from the Viking Era.

The white church

The most famous of all Norse ruins, the ruin of Hvalsey Church, has now been saved for posterity. The National Museum of Greenland with support from Dancea and the A.P. Møller and Wife's Fund for Ordinary Purposes has restored and stabilized the church ruin so it can stand for the next thousand years. The south wall was lifted with a thirty-ton hydraulic jack. The foundation was cast during the lifting.

Qaqortoq means "the white place". The name can probably be attributed to Hvalsey Church, which was originally whitewashed, and, as the dominating building, gave the name to the town at the mouth of the fjord system, where Eric the Red's Brattahlid, the episcopal residence, Gardar and Hvalsey Church itself were located.

The Hvalsey Church ruin is the bestpreserved ruin from the Norse period. But it was not the only church in the area. At least six church ruins have been unearthed. Besides that, a number of private chapels.

The latter were obviously small. It is odd that the building style does not in the least resemble the style used for churches in Iceland. Until modern times, churches in Iceland have all been built of wood or sod, and they have been small. The churches erected during the Norse period in Greenland were relatively large, and built of stone. The walls were built using advanced masonry techniques with alternating thick and thin courses. The Hvalsey Church ruin has windows that widen out towards the inside like funnels, similar to the Anglo-Norman church style. The Norse cannot have learned that in Iceland. However, this building style is known in the British Isles. It is likely that the art of church building came to Greenland from there.

It is not unlikely that the damage was done while the church was being built, as the soil under the foundation collapsed under the heavy weight of the wall.

Latest news

By chance, Hvalsey Church has become the site of the last documentation of the presence of the Norse in Greenland. On the sixteenth of September 1408, Thorstein Olafssøn married Sigrid Bjørnsdatter in Hvalsey Church. After that the rest is silence about the Norse in Greenland.

Up until the beginning of the 1900s, countless expeditions searched for the descendents of the Greenlandic Norse. In vain.

A thirtyton hydraulic jack was used to stabilize the wall, preserving for posterity the finest memorial of the Norse period.

From garbage dump to modern refuse management

Even though there are no roads between Greenlandic towns, there are a substantial number of vehicles that end up in dumps, partly from building and construction.

"Among other things, we now have a new waste incineration plant, which means that we no longer have to landfill flammable waste, but can burn it and get heat from garbage." Jesper Møller, engineer for the Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg) Municipality, cannot quite hide his pride, and personally, I understand why. Two years ago, I stood in exactly the same spot at the garbage dump. But where I then saw a mountain of rubbish up to two meters high covering a couple hundred square meters, there is now a flat area with a ditch. We will get back to the ditch later. That garbage has all been burnt in the city's brand new waste incineration plant. All that is left now are ten Big Bags of fly ash on pallets. We will also get back to the fly ash.

For many years, there seemed to be no solution to the problem of waste disposal in Greenlandic towns and villages. Since the mid-90s, however, the Home Rule Government of Greenland has worked determinedly to improve the situation, and in 1996, with support from Dancea, the consultancy Carl Bro, Inc. drew up a general waste management scheme for Greenland. The Greenlandic Parliament took note of the main principles of the scheme, and much has happened since. The Home Rule Government earmarked funds for the municipal waste disposal sector, and Dancea has supported a number of municipal projects.

The money has been used for the new waste incineration plant in Sisimiut, among other things. Here, construction waste is mixed with household waste into a homogeneous mass, so that it will burn evenly. The plant is computer controlled, and manned by one person, who sits surrounded by video screens that show the central sections of the plant. One display looks like a glimpse through the gates of hell.

An enormous electronic filter cleans the smoke, in order to meet the environmental standards set by the Ministry of Environment and Nature. For the time being, slag and fly ash, with its heavy metal content, are landfilled.

Lead and especially copper contents are considerably higher than in similar plants in Denmark. I ask why. "Our garbage sorting is not good enough yet. For one thing, we need to separate out electronic waste and low-energy light bulbs, and so on," answers Jesper Møller, who estimates that the amount of garbage per person in Greenland is the same as it is in Denmark. Disposable culture is just as bad in Greenland as in Denmark.

Environmentally hazardous waste

In order to reduce the most damaging kinds of waste, the plan is to set up a fully modern delivery site for hazardous waste. It will require sorting, which there is no tradition for at all in Greenland. In cooperation with the Home Rule Government, plans have been made for an information campaign on garbage sorting.

But what will happen to the fly ash? The Ministry of Environment and Nature is investigating different possibilities. The most likely solution is landfilling the fly ash in a safe place in Greenland.

A recent thesis from the Technical University of Denmark looked at whether the waste deposition site could be in Sisimiut. A valley near the Sisimiut incineration plant was studied. The valley is outside the catchment area for the water supply lakes. The bedrock is covered with sand and gravel. The project recommends setting up a deposition site for slag and fly ash if other ways of using them cannot be found. Landfilling is the last resort for substances that have become so concentrated that they cannot enter the cycles of the earth.

Even the harsh Greenlandic climate does not remove all traces.

District heating, please

At the back of the garbage disposal plant there are twelve fans that send heat directly out to the snow buntings. Jesper Møller is clearly irritated by this. "As it is now, we only use twenty-five percent of the heat that we produce burning garbage. The heat is put into the city's district heating system. The first thing on my wish list is expanding the district heating grid," says Jesper Møller.

This would, however, be a costly affair. One meter of transmission line costs 5,700 crowns (c. 700 US dollars).

And now, back to the ditch. During my earlier visit, I spoke with Professor Arne Villumsen from the Technical University of Denmark about how heavy metals leach down through the layers of soil under the garbage dump. At that time, the front of heavy metals was being charted as it slowly but surely approached the sea. Now that part of the dump has been cleared away, a ditch has been dug to lead water directly out to sea. Heavy metals from the sins of old are still moving toward the sea, but not, as they once were, at higher and higher concentrations.

In coming years, all Greenlandic towns will have waste incineration plants.

The plant in Sisimiut is not unique. Three of the big cities have incineration plants. In Nuuk (Godthåb), the incineration plant has been running for twelve years, in Qaqortoq (Julianehåb), for three. Similar plants are planned for Aasiaat (Egedesminde), Maniitsoq (Sukkertoppen) and Ilulissat (Jakobshavn). Within a few years, there will be incineration plants in all the larger towns.

Incineration first

In the central square in Nuuk, right next to the big new arts center, Katauq, the National Association of Local Authorities in Greenland (KANUKOKA) is located. Jens Romerdahl is a senior technical, environmental and housing consultant. He helped Martha Labansen, head of the project, with waste management planning for Greenland.

"The strategy comes from the action plan that Home Rule put into effect in 1996," says Jens Romerdahl. "The first point of endeavor was the establishment of waste incineration plants in order to remove the bulkiest garbage." Paper and oil wastes improve combustion. "We burn as much as possible for the benefit of heat production in Greenland instead of sailing it over the Atlantic," says Jens Romerdahl.

The next step will be to do something about environmentally hazardous waste. For some years, all the municipalities have, delivered dangerous waste, like cars and chemicals, to MOKANA, a company in Aalborg.

Fly ash and slag are not sailed to Denmark. "I imagine that slag can be used for road construction in places where melt water does not run over the road. The fly ash will probably be landfilled," says Jens Romerdahl.

Garbage dumps used to be full of oil drums. This is the dump in Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn) in 1991. Stores of oil barrels left by expeditions in remote regions are a special problem.

Valuing the environment

Does environmental assistance make a difference? "Yes," answers Jens Romerdahl firmly. "A incineration plant in Sisimiut, for example, costs 25-30 million crowns (c. 3 million US dollars). The Home Rule Government and the municipalities share the financing equally. A grant of a few million from the Danish state to the municipal share can mean that the decision will go the right way."

In Denmark, more than five percent of the national income is used for cleaner air, wastewater, garbage and other environmental interventions.

Also with respect to the garbage, Greenland is coming to resemble the other part of the Realm more and more.

Natural resource management and information dissemination

It would be so easy if there were enough birds and fish. If there were enough space. But in Greenland, there is not enough. There is not enough space, because people are clustered together in cities and villages, and so their activities - fishing and hunting trips - usually take place within a small area. There are too many people in Greenland to live directly off the country's own natural resources.

In any case, that is not the intention. However, since birds and fish are utilized by both professional hunters, and by people that want to hunt and fish in their free time - just like in Denmark - it is necessary to agree upon the shared management of nature and its resources.

That can be done in many ways, and that is what this chapter is about. It is also about the necessity of continuing the discussion of how we want to use nature and its resources. The decisions must be shared on both the local and the global level. The local community in a village that wonders why the common eider is declining should be in touch with other villages to hear whether the lack of eiders is general in the area. They should also be in contact with biologists, who can tell them if the common eider is declining all over Greenland or all over the world.

Local over-exploitation

Let us take the management of thickbilled murres as an example. The conclusion is clear: the thick-billed murre has been overexploited locally, but is not threatened on a global level. Collective management and thorough information dissemination are needed, as it turns out that many of the hunters involved do not know if the murres they kill come from their own area or from other colonies.

Biologists are reasonably sure of the results they come up with because they cooperate internationally. In practice, much of the information comes from bird banding. The banding of birds and the recovery of rings has mapped out the most important migration routes, and shown where the birds are at different times of the year.

There are, in all, twenty-three thickbilled murre colonies in Greenland. Each year, between 200,000 and 400,000 are killed. And the thick-billed murre, which is the country's most important game bird, contributes between three and twelve million crowns (c. 360,000-1,400,000 US dollars) a year to the Greenlandic economy.

But during the year, hunters in Greenland shoot murres from different populations. That is because of the complicated migration patterns the different populations follow.

	In the southernmost part of Greenland, the hunters mostly kill birds from Svalbard.
	Hunters in the central parts of West Greenland mostly shoot birds from the colonies in West Greenland and northeastern Canada (Nunavut).
	From Disko Bay north in the early spring, hunters can shoot murres that are on their way to their breeding grounds in Upernavik, Avanersuaq and Canada.

In order to say anything serious about the occurrence of the thick-billed murre, it is necessary to divide Greenland up into different areas: northwestern, midwestern, and southwestern Greenland.

Some of the largest thick-billed murre colonies are in northwest Greenland, which is sparsely populated. It seems that these colonies are pretty stable. Further south, things look worse. Especially in the southern part of Upernavik district, Uummannaq municipality and in Disko Bay, the colonies have declined drastically. Within fifty years, fifty to ninety percent of some colonies has disappeared. Other colonies have vanished entirely.

In five years a pair of thick-billed murres can become at the most eight thickbilled murres.

South of Disko Bay, there are a number of smaller colonies. Some in decline. Some stable. One of them seems to be growing. But the colonies here are generally small, so it does not mean much in the big picture if they grow or decline a little.

Bad news from the west coast

There is obviously someone behind this information on the murres. Flemming Merkel from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and Knud Falk from the Danish Polar Center are both ornithologists who work intensively with the thickbilled murre. Over the years, Dancea has supported some of the research on thickbilled murres. I asked Flemming Merkel if hunters are generally aware of the situation with the murres.

"They are well-informed locally. But they do not have an overview of how things look for the whole of Greenland," answers Flemming Merkel. "That means that they sometimes make hasty conclusions. If they see that their own colonies are in decline, maybe they will conclude that the murres are breeding somewhere else."

The most recent information is that the populations are still declining in the southern part of Upernavik district, and that the same is true of Ilulissat. The thickbilled murre colonies in Uummannaq have disappeared. The little colony in Qaqortoq has also declined, as have the only two colonies in East Greenland (near Ittoqqortoormiit).

Regarding the reasons the thickbilled murre has declined in some places, Knud Falk remarks: "Hunting is a significant reason. There are problems in the places where the thick-billed murre only appears during breeding season. People hunting in the winter in southwest Greenland are not killing local breeding birds. It is the spring hunt that is the problem. Especially in the areas near the towns in Upernavik district and in East Greenland, where the population has been overexploited."

Of the 200,000-400,00 thick-billed murres killed each year, eighty percent are shot in southwest Greenland in the winter. And the timing of the hunt determines how much pressure is put on the population.

"If the hunters in Upernavik district shoot 5000 thick-billed murres, the hunters here think that it is unimportant, but it isn't," says Knud Falk and continues, "5000 murres shot in Melville Bay can do more damage than 50,000 shot in southwest Greenland. In Upernavik, the murres are shot during their breeding season. The hunt in southwest Greenland involves mostly the young, birds that would have died in the winter cold anyway. The wintering areas accommodate birds from Norway, Iceland and Canada. That pretty much means that the winter hunt draws on foreign young, and the local hunts take the local breeding birds. It is much more sustainable to shoot the winter birds than the breeding birds," concludes Knud Falk.

In five years, a pair of ptarmigan can become 2000 ptarmigan.

There are many other influences besides hunting. There is egg collecting, both legal and illegal. There are predators, first and foremost the glaucous gull. There are disturbances, as we will see in a moment.

Hunting thickbilled murre young.

The community center

I asked Flemming Merkel how the hunters receive his messages at the meeting in the community center.

"The people in Upernavik feel unfairly treated. They feel that they have a right to the same resources. They do not feel it is reasonable that they can't utilize the thickbilled murres in the summer.

"We make a big effort to tell them about the biology of the thick-billed murre, because it is so special.

"The thick-billed murre only breeds when it is five years old, and never has more than one chick at a time. When a population has been halved, it takes ages to recover. This is where the disagreements arise. The hunters don't believe that the thick-billed murre only has one egg a year. Or they choose not to believe it.

"They can't understand that it is worse to shoot the old birds in the mountains either. They think that it is worse to shoot the young birds in the winter. It contradicts the prevalent view that children are the most important. It is, in fact, the opposite for the thick-billed murre. Only twenty percent of the thick-billed murres ever become old enough to lay eggs.

There is a big difference between how damaging thickbilled murre hunting is in the different parts of Greenland.

"So if you kill a young thickbilled murre, you kill one fifth of an adult murre. If you kill an adult murre, you lose a bird that would have laid eggs and had chicks for many years.

"As humans, we think that the future rests on the children. If the ship sinks, it is the women and children that should be saved first.

"With thick-billed murres, it is the opposite. There is a naturally high mortality rate in the early years. This can be exploited, because many of these birds will die anyway," concludes Flemming Merkel.

The public meetings are very important to the biologists from the Greenlandic Institute of Natural Resources, to the representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Nature, and to the local hunters. Many hunters are informed about the migration conditions and biology of the thickbilled murre. Biologists and administrators get some insight into what the hunting periods mean in practice, for example, that the short hunting season brings about an intensive hunt in May where so many murre are shot that a large portion of the take is frozen.

Thick-billed murres for sale. Thickbilled murre hunting in Greenland has reached a level that is not sustainable - at least, not locally. A once large population in Uummannaq has disappeared, and in Upernavik, especially the colonies near the towns have been drastically reduced. The main cause seems to be that until 1988, hunting during the breeding period was legal. The population of thickbilled murres in the sparsely populated Avanersuaq (Thule) seems, on the other hand, to be intact, and today, more thick-billed murres breed there than in all the other parts of Greenland combined. The small colonies in East Greenland are also declining. The most significant decline took place before the hunting rules were passed, and it will take ages for the population to recover, because the thickbilled murre only becomes fertile when it is five years old.

Regulations

When a population is under pressure - in this case the thick-billed murre population - it is necessary to regulate the hunt. This can be done with:

	Closed seasons.
	Safety zones - like important breeding and resting sites.
	Restrictions on hunting methods.
	Restrictions on who is allowed to hunt the thick-billed murre.
	Quotas
	Restrictions on trade in thickbilled murres.

As far as we know, there are no longer captains that sound their sirens in order to see thousands of murres all leaving the bird cliffs at once. A disturbance that causes loss of eggs and young every time.

On land, at sea and in the air

Mountain tourism is already well developed in the area around Kangerlussuaq (Sønder Strømfjord)

In 1992, the Home Rule Government of Greenland drew up a ten-year plan for the development of tourism in Greenland. Future development in the country would not focus exclusively on marine resources. At the same time, there is a lot of potential in Greenland for tourism, since it can offer experiences that suit current trends. There are few people in Greenland; there are great natural amenities, as well as a primeval character that tourists cannot find many other places in the world.

The masses or the elite?

Some people in tourism in Greenland say decidedly that it will take a lot of marketing to get many tourists to Greenland. Others think that marketing is unnecessary, because Greenland sells itself.

The main question is whether the focus should be on mass tourism, or on the elite. The answer will be found at the end of this chapter.

As it is now, Greenland does not get mass tourism. Each year, 31,000 tourists visit Greenland, which is much less than the number that visit LegoLand in one day.

Current tourism is concentrated on the west coast near the two airports and the bigger cities.

Outfitters

For two years, Jeppe Mordhorst, who is paid by Dancea, has been a leading promoter of creating tourist attractions in Greenland. Boat rides in Narsaq and Nuuk. Dogsled trips and small excursions in Sisimiut and Ilulissat. He has worked to create activities for well-heeled tourists that want exclusive experiences.

"We studied gorilla tourism in Rwanda - before everything fell apart. It was a very exclusive form of tourism. There was no need to market it. There was a waiting list. There were only two tribes of mountain gorillas. People paid 35,000 crowns (c. 4200 US dollars) just to take part. Plus plane tickets and hotel accommodation. The same is true of polar bear tourism in Canada. It costs up to 90,000 crowns (c. 11,000 US dollars) for two or three weeks on a dogsled looking to see a polar bear. If you focus on quality with exotic forms of tourism like that, the marketing takes care of itself."

His main aim was to get some operators going. There were thirty-five outfitters, Greenlanders mostly of modest means - one had a boat, one drove dogsleds, one had two cabins up in the mountains, and so on. Not big hotel owners, Greenlandic hunters. They were brought together by Greenland Tourism for at two-week basic program: a little English, a little marketing, a radio certificate, a first assistance course. The program was held at the business school in Qaqortoq.

Sustainable tourism

Is it possible to create tourism that is not destructive to nature? Where you consume as little as possible? Where the local community benefits from the activities? Ecotourism, in short.

When you arrive in Greenland by plane, you have already used up your global energy quota for many years into the future.

"Oddly enough, the requirements for eco-tourism are extra high," says Jeppe Mordhorst. "It is a very big thing to demand that the local community be involved. If a farmer wants to convert to organic agriculture, he just converts. He doesn't go ask his neighbour if he wants to convert too, because otherwise the pesticides will be blown over. Maybe he should, but the requirements for eco-tourism are much higher."

Big animals sell

You could say something terribly exciting about an interesting wolf spider, how it has adapted to freezing temperatures, etc. But it would not create a sensation. It takes more than that, it takes whales or musk oxen.

That is why some outfitters wanted to do musk ox trophy hunting. Presumably the greatest concentration of musk oxen is found not far from the airport in Kangerlussuaq.

Cultural tourism: here the ruins of the Norse church in Hvalsey

"It turned out that there was a market for a summer hunt and a winter hunt for musk oxen. In the winter, pretty much everything can be transported by dogsled. In the summer, you can't get into the area except by helicopter. The alternative is a big fourwheel drive. That is perhaps even worse for the environment than flying by helicopter," says Jeppe Mordhorst. "We said - Let's do it as well as we can, and then we can raise the standards later on."

Being a tourist guide on a musk ox trophy hunt is hard work. It requires a high standard of service. The beer must be cold and ready as soon as it is wanted. You have to tell stories about flowers and bees. It is really tough being a trophy hunt organizer.

The result was that many environmentally friendly ideas were introduced. From collecting cigarette butts to not burying plastic, and about transport, animal welfare, and how to shoot the animals. The latter is not something Greenlandic hunters were too concerned about. But it means a lot to the German business manager cum trophy hunter. Perhaps it does not mean much with respect to the environment. Nevertheless, it helps give the trophy hunt a green profile.

Once nature becomes an economic asset, taking care of it becomes more interesting. That is the idea behind ecotourism.

Overcrowding

Tourist rides on dogsleds are a good example of sensible eco-tourism. It also contributes to keeping that aspect of the culture alive. Dogsledding is declining fast.

Natural tourism: here a "pingo", which appeared when the soil that had thawed in the summer was squeezed in the fall between the permanently frozen bottom layer and the newly frozen top layer of soil. When that happens, volcanolike formations can form, like here.

In Sisimiut, there have been confrontations between dogsledders and snow scooter drivers.

This is linked to the paradox that even though there are so few tourists, and Greenland is such a big country compared to its population, still, there is not enough space, because all activities take place in the same local areas.

Dogsleds drive the same way again and again. After ten minutes, the first snow scooters passes at full throttle. The smell of gasoline is left hanging in the narrow valley. Ten minutes later, the next one comes. It is difficult for the person that wants to drive a dogsled - real eco-tourism - to sell his product. Gasoline fumes from snow scooters are not mentioned in the advertisements. Only polar bears and the great calm.

The overcrowding has made many outfitters give up. The customers were disappointed. Things did not live up to the advertisements. And that is an element of eco-tourism, that the marketing must be honest.

Newly built Greenlandic skin kayaks in Sisimiut.

"My great idea with eco-tourism was that tourism could be use to get people interested in taking care of nature in Greenland," concludes Jeppe Mordhorst.

He does not think that all tourism in Greenland should be eco-tourism, only that it could be a relatively large niche.

The director of the tourist association

"The picture in a tourist's mind when he imagines Greenland is dogsleds and kayaks. It is the Greenlandic family and the drum dance. It is the mask dance and choral singing. It is the national costume and its history." As managing director of the tourist association in Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg), Anette Grønkjær Lings knows what makes Greenland sell.

She works with three "pillars". The first is that the city and the area around it should be presentable. The second is culture. And the third is discovery tourism: sailing, snow scooters, dogsleds, and fishing.

Anette Grønkjær Lings mentions wear and tear on nature as the greatest threat to the environment. "We have a very big country, but things that get trampled down take many years to grow up again."

Knud Rasmussens Højskole, the first school of its kind in Greenland, is located in Sisimiut, and works especially with Greenlandic culture. It is the local population that attends the school. On the harbor in one of the old warehouses, a workshop for Greenlandic arts and crafts has been set up.

She is very enthusiastic about the kayak club readopting old Greenlandic kayak disciplines with the kayak turns and so on.

Skiing

Kayaking is a sport in Denmark. Is that the tendency in Greenland, turning the hunters' ways of moving around into sports?

"Here in Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg) we have a lot of skiing because of the Arctic Circle Race, which is one of the trademarks of Sisimiut. Besides that, the municipality has a system of cross-country routes ready all winter," explains Anette Grønkjær Lings.

Everything seems to indicate that extreme sports of this kind are increasing. Besides the Arctic Circle Race, there is also skiing in eastern and southern Greenland. The latter is called the Greenland Adventure Race, and takes place in the summer. It resembles the triathlon: biking, skiing, and sailing. Greenland is ideal for mountain bikes. And south Greenland is especially good because the towns are reasonably close to each other.

It is striking that not only elite skiers sign up. Ordinary people, too, are interested in achieving something out of the ordinary, and would like to challenge themselves in nature. It is not for nothing that the Arctic Circle Race is called the hardest ski race in the world.

Organization in nature

There are conflicts between the dogsledders and the snow scooter drivers. But in Sisimiut there are strict rules for where snow scooters can be driven. There is only one place where the two paths cross. The hunting areas are prioritized in this connection, not tourism. If you drive a snow scooter in the hunting areas, you risk scaring the game animals. That is why they have decided in Sisimiut not to allow hunting from snow scooters.

As managing director of the tourist association, Anette Grønkjær Lings would of course like to have as many customers as possible, but how much can the area sustain?

"The area between Kangerlussuaq and Sisimiut gets a lot of attention. People like to go hiking there in the summer and there is a three-day dogsled race there in the winter. If we made sure to take our garbage away with us, then the environment would be able to sustain more than it does today. There is some empty hotel capacity. What we need is organization," concludes Anette Grønkjær Lings, who dreams of arranging dogsled trips to the nearby glaciers during the summer.

Entry arch made of the lower jaw of a Greenland whale. The old church of Sisimiut is seen in the background.

The professionals

Julia Pars from Greenland Tourism promotes professionalism. One of the first things she remarks, when I happen to meet her in the airport in Upernavik, is that the business school in Qaqortoq graduated five people from their tourism program in both 1999 and 2000. The program is three and a half years long.

"If I were to name a success, it would be ice golf. An idea that was created in Uummannaq," says Julia Pars, who works as a development consultant for Greenland Tourism. "Another success is the ice hotel in Sønder Strømfjord. It is a series of snow cabins, where you sleep on an ice bed covered with musk ox skins. There is candle light. In one of the igloos there is an ice bar, where you can have your drink in an ice glass."

The idea came originally from northern Sweden - Jukkasjärvi - in Lapland. There is an ice hotel there that now covers 3,000 m2. "We got the idea of setting up the ice hotel in Greenland on a study trip with a Japanese agent," explains Julia.

She thinks that these slightly zany ideas are good because they create a lot of PR in other parts of the world. I ask Julia Pars if sustainable tourism or eco-tourism have a future in Greenland.

"Sustainable tourism," muses Julia Pars, "I understand that to be tourism that you can live both off and with. That it treats both tourists and local people decently. It's not about changing everything just so you can attract tourists, but at the same time giving them professional service based on the conditions here in Greenland."

"In Greenland Tourism we are not counting on eco-tourists. We focus on the ordinary tourists who are looking for new experiences," concludes Julia Pars.

Danish tourists

The average tourist in Greenland is Danish, arrives in a plane, spends five to seven days in one or more towns, and uses the towns as a base for sailing or hiking trips. The focus is mostly on activities in nature.

About 31,000 tourists come to Greenland each year. Over eighty percent of the tourists come from Denmark. The Germans are next.

It is the well-to-do tourist that they are counting on, because it will never be cheap to travel to Greenland. The average trip costs 10,000 to 30,000 crowns (c. 1200-3600 US dollars) per person. That is, in itself, a limitation. Everyone is welcome, of course, but the majority of the guests are "gray panthers"; typically a bit older, whose children have flown the nest, and who are maybe missing just one more dot on the map or have always dreamt of coming to Greenland. Greenland is very exotic, and is somehow strongly connected to Denmark.

The biggest island in the world

Greenland is the biggest island in the world. It stretches from Nunap Isua (Kap Farvel) in the south at 59°46' N lat to Odaap Qeqertaa (Odak Island) at 83°40' N lat. The polar circle crosses the country at 66°33' N lat, which means that north of it you can experience polar night and the midnight sun. The further north, the longer the periods of polar dark and polar light.

The country covers an area of 2,175,600 km². Only about fifteen percent of the country is free of ice; the rest is covered by the world's second-largest ice sheet: the inland ice. It contains nine percent of the world's fresh water, and is 3,500 m deep at its thickest. In some areas near the coast, mountaintops protrude above the ice, and form islands of land, known as nunatakker. In places where the glaciers reach all the way to the sea, icebergs break off and are carried away by the sea currents. The coast of Greenland, which is about 40,000 km long, consists mostly of skerries, with innumerable big and small islands and fjords.

Climate

Greenland is located in the Arctic. That means that the average temperature in the summer is never over 10°C, that there is permafrost, so only the top layers of soil thaw in the summer, that the country has little rainfall, and no forests, only a little brush and bushes as tall as a man in south Greenland. The country can be divided into subarctic, low-Arctic and high-Arctic climate zones (see map). The lowest precipitation levels are in North Greenland, where there is arctic desert in some areas. South Greenland receives more precipitation, and is fertile enough for limited agriculture.

Several systems of sea currents meet in Greenlandic waters. They influence the temperature and salt content of the sea, and thus the occurrence of marine organisms. The sea currents also determine the spread of the sea ice. Because of the sea ice, the areas from Qeqertarsuup Tunua (Disko Bay) north, as well as the east coast can only be navigated for a few months in the summer. Off of West Greenland from Paamiut (Frederikshåb) to Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg), is what is known as the open water area, where the fjords and waters near the coast freeze only occasionally in the winter.

Population

Greenland is divided into eighteen municipalities, each with a capital city and with fifty-nine villages in all. The population in 1996 was about 56,000, about eighty percent urban dwellers and twenty percent village dwellers. By far the largest part of the population lives in West Greenland, in Paamiut (Frederikshåb), Nuuk (Godthåb), Maniitsoq (Sukkertoppen), and Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg) municipalities. The southern municipalities, and the hunting regions, which include Uummannaq, Upernavik, Qaanaaq as well as Tasiilaq (Ammassalik) and Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) municipalities, are the most sparsely populated.

Occupation

Fishing is the main occupation, and is estimated to employ about 2,500 people directly, with about 3,000 employed in the fishing industry. Besides this, a number of people work in jobs related to fishing. Hunting is of direct or indirect significance for about twenty percent of the population, and is the principle occupation in Qaanaaq, Upernavik, Uummannaq, Tasiilaq (Ammassalik) and Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) municipalities. Sheep and reindeer are raised in south Greenland. It is expected that tourism and the extraction of raw materials will become leading industries, and will supplement fishing in the future.

Map of Greenland

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