Grass, stones, lichen...

An inventory of Alectoria lichen was conducted in the territory of the Lapland Herdsman's Committee in 1999 to 2000, in which it confirmed that the incidence of Alectoria lichen in the logged forest areas is very low, and that logging operations cause considerable harm to reindeer husbandry.

The logging operations result in a complete loss of lichen in the areas affected, allegedly lasting for hundreds of years.

The authors allege that the principal cause of this decline in winter pastures, and particularly of horsehair lichen pastures, are the logging operations.

3.3 The authors recall that after heavy snows in 1997, herders had for the first time to supply capital and labour intensive fodder for the reindeer rather than rely on lichen.

So what you're looking at here is the rhizocarpon geographicum, or map lichen, and this is around 3,000 years old and lives in Greenland, which is a long way to go for some lichens.

The ongoing and increasing logging of fine lichen forests increases the necessity of providing fodder and threatens the economic self sustainability of reindeer husbandry, as husbandry depends on the reindeer being able to sustain themselves.

At the outset, they complain that since the 1980s, some 1,600 hectares of the Herdsmen's Committee's grazing area in Paadarskaidi have been logged, accounting for some 40 per cent of lichen (utilized for feeding reindeer) in that specific area.

Studies on the concentration of persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyl and pesticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane, in soil and lichen samples from the eastern coast of Antarctica highlight atmospheric long range transport of those pollutants from Africa, South America or Australia.