TUNDRA WILDLIFE

TUNDRA REGION WITH 
FFORDS, 
GLACIERS AND MOUNTAINS,  
KONGSFFORDEN,  SPITSBERGEN

Facts about the Tundra and what is the Tundra?

Following the forest towards the north of the planet, you will find stunned willows and birches. Further on, it is replaced by conifer and the vast treeless plains where only low vegetation survives. There are sedges, rushes, perennial herbs and dwarf woody plants, bryophytes and lichens. This is the tundra.

The ground is permanently frozen. The permafrost stops drainage of the soil and roots can't penetrate. It is frozen in winter and thaws in summer with a waterlogged surface.

Sedges and rushes grow in boggy areas. Dwarf willows and birches in well-drained areas. The mosses are protected in the winter by a cover of snow from the icy condition.

TUNDRA IN GREENLAND

TUNDRA IN ALASKA

Tundra Plants

For one or two months the sun raises high enough to melt the snow in the summer. This is the time when nature comes alive and the legendary summer carpet of flowers in the tundra comes alive. You will find in abundance forget-me-nots, blue anemones, Canadian dogwood, lupins and saxifrage. It also buzzes with life of insects breeding in pools of melting snow. There are millions of mosquitoes, midges, flies, plant-sucking weevils, mites, springtails, blowflies, dung beetles, spiders and caddisflies. The ponds and marches are full of crustacceans, aquatic insects, fish and plants.

This offers a great feast and is an invitation for birds to migrate to the tundra. They breed and rare their chicks there. It is teeming with ducks, swans, geese, plovers, sandpipers, phalaropes and other waders.

CARIBOU

Tundra Animals

After they flew south the reindeer and caribou herds moving into the tundra and have a feast on aromatic plants. Their hooves are adapted, being broad, flat and cleft, to be sure-footed on the snow and icy ground. The arctic wolves follow the reindeer and caribou herds. Their smell is 100 times more sensitive than man.

The long-tailed skua favourite meal is the lemmings. The period when the lemmings breeding plentiful; it also encourage the skuas to breed successfully. The skuas breed on the tundra and spend winters at sea.

ARCTIC WOLF

When the Arctic Wolves trying to attack the Ox calves; the herd of musk oxen stand tightly packed in a circle, with a barricade of horns outwards toward the wolves.

The large herds of caribou crossing the tundra feed on lichens which were uncovered by the melting snow. They head towards the north in the summer to calve. Males and females have antlers.

The moose coming into the tundra eating the aquatic vegetation. Usually a third of their calves are killed by wolves and other predators.

Red throated divers raise their chicks there, alongside other migrate bird. They also called loons.

It is amazing that the American porcupine sits up on a tree. Its diet is roots, berries, flowers and seeds which are plentiful in the summer.

In places where there are shrubs and dwarf trees; the Lapland buntings raise its chicks there. In the winter they join the snow buntings.

SNOWY OWL

The snowy owl's favourite prey is the lemmings which she catches at dawn and at dusk. The male is white all year round.

ARCTIC HARE

Arctic hares hop around, often on their hind legs, in their white coat. Maybe they get a better view.

Red foxes adapt to most environments - such as the Arctic tundra.

WOLVERINE

The wolverine, larger than a weasel, has been known to rob a grizzly bear's dinner. They are so vicious.

ARCTIC GROUND SQUIRREL

Finally the Arctic ground squirrel is one of not many, which hibernates. It emerges only for the short summer but foxes, wolves, eagles and grizzly bears are eaten them. The Inuit people hunting them to make warm parkas from the thick pelt.