| Summary: | This study is part of a larger research project on Raggovidda wind power plant (WP) situated northwest on the Varanger peninsula in Finnmark, Northern Norway. The WP was built in an important insect relief habitat, and associated power lines and roads pass through calving areas and good pastures. The main object of this study was to investigate how and to what extent the WP affected area use of free-ranging semi-domesticated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) during the construction period and the operational phase. The analyzes are based on annual fecal pellet counts along transects in two test areas and a control area. The WP was built in 2013-2014, giving two years of before-data, two years of data from the construction period and two years of data from the operational phase. The study is one of few based on a «before-after-control-impact» (BACI) study design, and the first on wind power and semi-domesticated reindeer. Compared with prior to the WP-development, the two test areas (0-4 km from infrastructure) were less used in the construction period while use of the control area increased. Fecal density was the same in all three areas in 2017 as in 2011, and for the test areas also in 2015. This indicates that construction of the WP resulted in changes in area use due to avoidance during the construction period, but not during the operational phase. The variation in number of pellets coincided with the variation in number of reindeer in the herd during the construction and operational phase, supporting fecal pellet counts as a representative method to capture area use of the entire herd. Reindeer showed avoidance behavior towards the WP road in 2013, by increased area use with distance to the road. There was no such effect the first year of the operational phase, but both in 2015 and 2017 there was substantially less use of areas closer than 100 m from the road compared to areas 100-300 and 400-700 m away. Number of fecal pellets differed to a significant extent with increasing distance. The distribution ...
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