"This program will clearly provide a benefit to the herders in the state," Ryan said. "They will have more options, more facilities they can use, and more buyers to sell their product to."

"A couple of years ago we gave up the inspection program that we had," she said. "We gave that back to USDA as a result of budget cuts. At that time, we promised we would remain in the reindeer industry and we would continue to inspect reindeer products. Unfortunately, since that time, the industry has had a lot of problems and they haven't had a need for it."

Now, Ryan said, herders on the Seward Peninsula near Nome and on Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea are ramping up their business.

"They're starting to get their plants together, and getting ready to process and slaughter," she said.

Looking ahead in Mekoryuk

On Nunivak Island, Job Weston is anxious to expand operations at the Nuniwarmiut Reindeer and Seafood Processing Company. He said with 15 employees, NRSP is vital to the small village of Mekoryuk, the only village on the island.

"This is probably the economic arm of the community. We're tribally owned," he said.

This fall, Weston said, there are six herders on the tundra rounding up animals for local consumption, and the commercial harvests will take place during winter.

He said for the past 10 years they have used aircraft to do the herding but that has gotten too expensive. "We're bringing back foot herding," he said. "We want to bring back the traditional ways, too. I'm thinking about writing a grant to get training for our young people."

He said the processing facility at Mekoryuk was inspected by USDA officials in April of this year and given full certification for commercial slaughterhouse operations. He said he welcomed the new DEC regulations, but he was wary of the expense involved.

NRSP is seeking a waiver on inspection fees, he said, and it wants to change the way the USDA looks at reindeer.

"I did write to the congressional delegation ... because currently, all reindeer are considered to be an exotic species. We want the USDA to designate them as amenable. I want to see them treated like cattle, not as an exotic species," he said. " I did get a reply from Sen. Ted Stevens, and he said he was working on it."

Weston said there are currently more than 4,000 reindeer in the Nunivak herd. NRSP harvested 1,651 animals last winter and fall for local use and commercial sales. He expects the numbers to rise.

"With the new, certified facility, I know we can process a lot more," he said. "I wanted to free up our hands so we could market to the continental U.S., or anywhere in the world ... and we have that now."

Inspected reindeer meat under the USDA and new state regulations is being sold by NRSP for $4.50 per pound, Weston said.

A change for the better

On the Seward Peninsula and St. Lawrence Island, there are 11 active caribou herds totaling approximately 10,000 animals, said Rose Fosdick, Program Director for the Kawerak Reindeer Herders' Association Program in Nome.

Established by Kawerak Inc., the non-profit arm of the Bering Straits Native Association, the RHA operates in much the same way as a "cattleman's organization," Fosdick said.

She said the new state regulations "will be great" because herders in the area now are only selling to local markets, and state/USDA approved inspections will open new doors.

"I think they (DEC) are taking the right step," she said. "If we can get the processing plants operating, and accepting reindeer meat, and then marketing it, the regulations from the state will be really helpful. I think it's a good thing."

They think it's a good thing at Indian Valley Meats Inc., too.

The Drumm family has been operating the game and fish processing facility south of Anchorage since 1976, manager Renia Drumm said.

Since the state turned the inspection process over to the federal government, she said, they have been forced to buy reindeer from outside Alaska. She said the new rules will change that, and she is looking forward to doing a lot more business with Weston and the NRSP.

"Now that he has meat that can go under inspection, hopefully we can buy all that he has and we won't have to go out of state anymore," she said. "Not to mention the fact that we have been unable to add new products because we haven't been able to buy it (reindeer) here. This will save on shipping and everything. It will be nice."

The new state program is coming on line just in time for Drumm and other processors.

The importing of reindeer and reindeer meat to Alaska was suspended by customs authorities for several months this year over concern about the presence of a chronic wasting brain disease and other disorders in reindeer, Drumm said.

The restrictions were recently lifted, but "it's been a very tough year," she said.

Round em' up ... Head em' out

"We've got the cleanest herd in Alaska," said Tom Williams, owner of Williams Reindeer Farm, near Butte in the Matanuska Valley.

Williams has been raising reindeer, and locking horns with the government, for 17 years. He said his efforts have been stymied by a federal law -- the Reindeer Industry Act of 1937 -- which prohibited anyone other than Alaska Natives from owning reindeer obtained from wild herds in Alaska.

Herding of reindeer was introduced in Alaska in 1922 as a way to provide both food and commercial opportunities in rural Alaska; the Reindeer Act was passed to protect the rural operations.

A practicing attorney by trade, Williams negotiated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1986 for permission to farm reindeer on his family's property. The BIA agreed, on condition the animals came from outside Alaska.

Williams and his wife Jean traveled by semi-truck to a remote town in the Canadian Arctic that winter and bought their original herd of 180 reindeer. And that's when the trouble started.

"There was this big fight about whether I could keep them. The federal government kept ordering me to kill them," he said. Native leaders challenged Williams in court, but he prevailed before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1997.

Williams quoted from the ruling: "It says 'non-Natives may own reindeer obtained from any source, other than from Natives or the Federal government in Alaska,'" he said.

Plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but after reviewing a briefing, the high court declined to hear the case and the lower court ruling was upheld in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Gene Williams said the farm now has 165 animals, all bred from Canadian stock, and most of them are bound for entertainment or tourist attraction jobs, not the dinner table.

"We've flown them to St. Paul, Minnesota ... to Chicago ... to New York, we sold eight to a place in the Catskill Mountains." she said. "We've sold them in 20 different states. We're not putting all our eggs in one basket, there's something different to do with them, other than just eat them."

Just the same, she said, the new DEC regulations will probably help boost their meat sales.

Tom Williams is calling for a change in state policy that would allow him and others to grow the reindeer business in Alaska. He said it's a matter of rewriting the law, allowing access to the resource.

"The Natives own about 20,000 caribou or less. The Federal government owns 1,000. The state government owns a million," he said. "Now if the state of Alaska was really interested in encouraging the reindeer industry, they have a million animals available at their disposal.

"They could allow non-Natives to round up caribou and convert them into reindeer. Because the only difference between a caribou and a reindeer is that one is caught and one is not," he said.

"I would take three helicopters, and about 20 guys on snowmachines," he said. "And we'd round up about 100,000 of those buggers and we'd drive them overland to the Dalton Highway ... put them in semi-trailers and send them down to Delta and Palmer and Pt. MacKenzie and we'd establish a huge reindeer raising industry."

State wildlife officials have long opposed the idea of allowing the general public to domesticate endemic wild animals in Alaska. And at least three bills allowing wildlife farming have been shot down by lawmakers in Juneau. Williams acknowledges that his dream of the Great Alaska Caribou Drive could be unattainable.

"There is no lobby on my side, it's just me," he said.