DM1ST(^12) DAILY MIRROR FRIDAY 30.08.
MIRROR SHOCK REPORT: ON
My grandad walked just a
mile to hunt. I had to travel
60 miles before I gave up
to work in a supermarket
problems and diabetes. It is a big
problem. Families don’t raise boys to
be hunters any more. Now, they tell
them to get a better education by
going to school. Many don’t return.
That is how much life has changing.”
The increasing temperatures are
also thawing the very foundations of
by here as it’s mainly exported,” said
Kent Klienschmidt, a native Green-
landic doctor working in Qaanaaq.
“It is too expensive, leading to many
families suffering from poverty and
nutritional problems. Switching to a
diet of imported pork and fast-food
means more patients with weight
once used as dog food is
now exported for human
consumption, forcing them to
buy more expensive food from
shops. Traditionally, the town’s
inhabitants would harpoon narwhals
from kayaks in the summer and in the
winter use dog sleds to travel across
the ice to hunt seals, walruses, polar
bears and other marine animals.
But this lifestyle is changing fast as
the climate warms. Fishing, tradition-
ally seen as a more menial and less
prosperous livelihood, has replaced
hunting as the main employment.
For now, fish stocks are in abun-
dance – but they are nowhere to be
found in the supermarket. “Despite
longer summers, fish is hard to come
an empty kennel, it is clearly the loss
of his beloved dogs that hurts most.
He said: “I had 24 working dogs but
the ice is more like slush these days so
they are just not needed. It was a very
sad day. I couldn’t bear to shoot them
so I took them to the dog inspector.
“If the sea ice goes completely, there
will be no need for the dogs and our
culture will disappear.”
Others struggle to afford to feed the
animals because industrial fish waste
northerly Inuit community, have eked
out an existence in the Arctic desert
in north-west Greenland for centuries
with sea ice a vital part of life.
When it freezes as daylight disap-
pears for four months in October, it is
the link to family in remote settle-
ments using dog sleds, snowmo-
biles and trucks to travel. When
it fails to freeze and with no
town connected by road,
communities are cut off.
Not only has climate
change made hunting
more dangerous due to
thinning ice, it has halved
the season – forcing thou-
sands to abandon their
family trade and resulting
in the slaughter of thou-
sands of dogs. Five years
ago, working dogs outnum-
bered the residents of
Qaannaaq by 1,000 to 630. Half
have since been put down.
Tobias Davidsen, 65, the town’s
dog inspector, said he had shot 70
strays this year and quit hunting last
year as “it was getting too hard to earn
a decent wage”.
Rasmus Avike, 53, started hunting
polar bears, seals and whales at 15.
His grandparents travelled less than a
mile to hunt but when he stopped two
years ago, he covered more than 60
miles because of ice disappearing
early due to the “changing weather”.
He now works in the town’s only
supermarket, restocked just twice a
year and subsidised by the Danish
Government due to the huge cost of
importing. But talking while sitting on
THE hillside is littered with
howling sled dogs, bored after
being chained up for months as
the warm weather drags on.
The dogs, a cold-hardy breed of
husky, are as much a part of the
landscape here as the icebergs – and
so important to local culture that
there is an attempt to award them
UNESCO world heritage protection.
But the noise is only a fraction of
what it used to be. Over the past two
decades, the population of dogs has
halved to around 15,000 as hunters are
forced to resort to new ways of
supporting their families.
Here, global warming has a human
cost, tearing families apart and threat-
ening livelihoods, identities and lives.
The Inughuit people, the world’s most
I had 24 working dogs but the
ice is like slush so they’re not
needed. I had them put down
RASMUS AVIKE ON HEARTBREAK AT LOSING HIS HUNTING DOGS
EXPENSIVE Qaanaaq’s supermarket
- RASMUS AVIKE, 53, WHO STARTED HUNTING WHEN HE WAS 15
IDLING Dogs in
the town have
no hunting workBY NADA FARHOUD
Environment Editor in Qaanaaq, North
West GreenlandEXCLUSIVE
Pictures by
ADAM GERRARDTown with the longest days
MIDNIGHT is fast approaching, but it
won’t be getting dark here for another
two-and-a-half months.
Judging by the glow of televisions in
the windows of the modest wooden
homes, few of the locals are asleep.Only an hour ago, a group of rowdy
children were called in by their mums.
With windows shielded by flimsy
blinds, it is impossible to escape the
midnight sun here in Qaanaaq. When
the sun finally disappears on October