NC

Before the summer is out, a boy and more than
2,300 reindeer will die from anthrax on southern
Yamal, and dozens of people will get sick—
a direct result of thawing permafrost, which
allowed animal carcasses buried during an outbreak
in the 1940s to reemerge, still bearing
infectious microbes.
Yet climate change isn’t even the greatest
threat to the Nenets. Development is. Russia’s
quest for new sources of hydrocarbons has encroached
on pastures that were already tight for
the estimated 255,000 reindeer and the 6,000
nomadic herders that live on Yamal. And it has
restricted the essential migration of some of the
herds. The Bovanenkovo gas field, the largest on
Yamal, sits directly in Brigade 4’s path. The herd
must cross the field, with its roads and pipelines,
to get to the summer pastures.
The Nenets have always lived close to the
edge; in their language, Yamal means “edge of
the world.” But these days at least some of them
seem precariously close to falling off.
PERCHED ON THE LEFT SIDE of the sleigh, his
legs firmly planted on a runner, Nyadma Khudi
raps the backs of his reindeer with a tyur—a long
pole of polished wood ending in an antler knob.
Grunting softly, he urges the four bulls forward
through shrub willows and clouds of mosquitoes.
Nyadma is Yuri’s elder brother and a former brigade
chief. As a sign of respect, his caravan of
several sleighs is in the lead as Brigade 4 presses
on toward Bovanenkovo.
After about an hour, Nyadma suddenly stops.
“We’ll break here for a bit, to let everybody catch
up,” he says, as he fishes a ringing cell phone out
of his capacious, bell-shaped reindeer-skin coat.
Other sleighs pull up behind us. The harmony of
clicking reindeer hooves soon gives way to the
cacophony of dial tones and human chatter as
LIFE ON THE EDGE 115