Reindeer herders battle power line needed for Norway's climate goal

By Gwladys Fouche JERGUL, Norway (Reuters) - It is minus 6 degrees Celsius in Arctic Norway and some 30 Indigenous Sami herders have gathered 1,500 reindeer in a corral, sorting who owns which animal after the herds mixed while grazing up on the Finnmark plateau. It is also an opportunity to discuss their big worry: a planned 54 km (34 mile) power line to supply Western Europe's largest liquefied natural gas plant. The line will be built on pastures the herders use in summer, in coastal areas where they say towns, cabins, roads, existing power lines and other infrastructure have already encroached on the land they use. "We cannot afford to lose more summer pastures," said Nils Mathis Sara, whose herd graze between May and October in the area where the line is due to be built this summer. "We have nothing else to give away," he said as he drove to the corral in Jergul, near the winter pasture on the plateau, some 1,700 km (1,000 miles) from the capital Oslo. As the temperature ...