482 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



2. A part of the north coast of Spitsbergen: Rensdyrlandet, Liefde Bay and 

 Wood Bay districts, peninsula between Wood Bay and Wijde Bay, Wijde 

 Bay's vicinity. 



3. District between Isfjorden and Van Mijen Bay and the valleys running 

 up from these fjords eastward to Storfjorden. 



4. The islands Edge 0y and Barents Land. 



Daniel N0is (April 1923) has given me the following particulars . . . : 



"Far more are being shot than ever come into existence. . . . The rein- 

 deer stock has been reduced in an alarming degree both on the north and 

 east coast. . . . 



"On the south side of Isfjorden, Green Harbour and Sassendalen included, 

 no less than about 400 reindeer were shot in 1905 and 1906 by hunters winter- 

 ing there and by coal-mining companies. . . . 



"The Spitsbergen reindeer does not generally roam far, and it therefore 

 has difficulty in re-establishing itself in a place in which it has once been 

 exterminated .' ' 



[When Norway assumed sovereignty over Spitsbergen in 1925,] the 

 first administrative step taken . . . was to prohibit the killing of reindeer 

 for a period of ten years. [In that summer only 23 of the animals were seen 

 by four government parties that crossed the best reindeer grounds of West 

 Spitsbergen in every direction. Only 55 had been shot by about 40 hunters 

 in that territory during the previous winter.] 



The number of reindeer still left in the remote parts of these islands is 

 believed to be sufficient for the renewal of the stock by immigration through- 

 out the archipelago. 



The annual reports of the National Association for Nature 

 Protection in Norway furnish additional information. In the re- 

 port for 1931 Adolf Hoel states that the total protection granted 

 has had a most successful effect upon the Reindeer stock. In the 

 Advent Valley, where no Reindeer existed before the protection, 

 larger and smaller herds are seen all the time. 



In the report for 1934 E. Sverdrup states that the animals are 

 seen in herds of 5 to 20 head. Wintering hunters still kill a good 

 many illegally, but this hunting most probably does no harm. 

 The poaching carried on from sealing ships in summer is, however, 

 more serious. The sealers are able to do much more harm than 

 the relatively few fox-hunters (25-30 men) who kill only for their 

 own use. 



In 1934 total protection was extended to cover a new period of 

 ten years. 



On a number of occasions marked Reindeer have been killed in 

 Spitsbergen, and this is apparently accepted by Gordon (1922, 

 p. 11), Wollebaek (1926, pp. 58-61), and others as evidence of the 

 immigration of tame Samoyed Reindeer from Novaya Zemlya 

 over the polar ice, perhaps by way of Franz Josef Land. This, 

 however, would be an amazingly long and foodless migration 

 380 km. from Novaya Zemlya to Franz Josef Land, and 340 km. 

 more from Franz Josef Land to Spitsbergen. Jacobi (1931, p. 76) 

 discredits the evidence adduced in support of the migration theory. 



