conservation

Left: Nordic Brown bee l Middle: Jutland cattle l Right: Icelandic sheep

Organised conservation efforts for animal genetic resources have been present in the Nordics since the 1980s. Different areas of responsibilities are divided between various stakeholders, including governmental sectors, advisory organisations, agricultural and genetic research institutes, and breeding organisations and associations. It is a commonality between all the countries that the governmental sector and agricultural/genetic research institutes carry an advisory or coordination role concerning conservation, while the breeding organisations carry out the practical breeding and record keeping. Farmers play a key role in conservation as they are the ones who use their resources to maintain the breeds – without the participation and enthusiasm from them, in situ conservation would not be possible.

Each country has different policies for which breeds are included in their national conservation work (Table 1). The conservation strategies and subsidy policies are outlined and overseen by different authorities. There are two main methods for conservation – in situ (live conservation in place of origin) and ex situ (conservation in the form of either live gene banks or cryoconservation). The methods have both advantages and limitations (thoroughly described by FAO), but these can be overcome when applied in a complementary manner. In the past, the Nordic countries focused mainly on maintaining live populations, but increasing pressures related to poorer population status and lower genetic variation, climate change and a range of anthropogenic factors (see section 3.1 and 3.2) have led to the implementation of cryoconservation efforts as recommended by FAO (Boes et al., 2023).

The economy of the keepers of the Nordic native farm animals, including native breeds, influences the ability to both care for and manage the populations in the best way possible. Consequently, finances play a large role in the carrying capacity of farms. The economic value of a breed usually takes priority over other values such as sustainability and culture. Therefore, keeping native breeds is often not profitable because cultural values are rarely recognised by markets despite the many benefits they offer to both the community and ecosystems. Conservation of native breeds therefore largely depends on voluntary work and special interest in a specific breed. A survey of Finnish farmers indicate that finances play a crucial role in the feasibility of keeping native breeds (Ovaska et al., 2021). While subsidies are provided for keeping native breeds in most of the Nordic countries, there have been listed challenges to these systems. For example, in Finland, farmers stress excessive bureaucracy, scarcity of subsidies and laborious requirements (e.g., having to report information to several registers).

Climate change, influencing feed availability, transmission patterns of diseases and migration patterns, is predicted to have more extreme effects in northern latitudes (European Commission, n.d; IPCC, 2021). This will likely affect the carrying capacity of the environment and increased pressures from both competition for feed resources and more unpredictable infectious diseases threatening the populations of the Nordic production animals. Changing climates influence the migratory patterns of vectors such as slugs, insects and wild birds, which influences the infectious disease transmission patterns. Global warming can increase the rate of development of important arthropods that act as vectors and alter their migration patterns. Events of important diseases becoming more prominent during longer periods of heat has for example been shown in Europe in 2018, when the incidence rate of West Nile virus increased in the Mediterranean, and the disease was identified in Germany for the first time (Frank et al., 2022). Further, more humid climates create desirable habitats for slugs, which act as intermediate hosts for problematic parasites (CDC, 2019; Konecny, 2022). Several of these pathogens can be transmitted across species and are sometimes zoonotic; their impact can be detrimental to production animals, companion animals and humans.   

Natural disasters – floods, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc. – threaten biodiversity especially by influencing the habitats of animals. Continuous severe disasters in the same place, can cause irreversible damage, and thus render a previous habitat inadequate. The Nordic regions also face the threat of natural disasters and extreme weather events such as storms, floods, droughts, and fires. The native breeds of Iceland are especially vulnerable due to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. 

Wars have had devastating effects on local livestock. During WWII, for example, many livestock were lost. In Finland, this accelerated the extinction of the Finnish landrace pig breed considerably. Even today, public unrest and warfare can severely threaten the conservation of native breeds. Conflicts can lead to depletion of resources, erosion of infrastructure and distribution of conservation practices, worsening challenges these breeds already face.  

Genetic variation is necessary for populations to cope and adapt to the continuously evolving pressures of their environment. Subsequently loss of genetic variation driven by factors such as high selection intensity, inbreeding, and consumer preference results in reduced resilience, decreasing their ability to respond to changing climates, emerging diseases, and shifts in consumer demands. In addition to genetic drift and inbreeding depression, population management can have shortcomings in initial genetic characterization and lack of consistent follow-up of genetic structure. An essential way to mitigate the risk of inbreeding depression is the application of breeding strategies that include the maintenance of genetic variation within the populations.

Managing the various Nordic AnGR populations in a sustainable way is vital to ensure their long-term conservation. For a conservation strategy to be appropriate for a given breed, it is essential to evaluate the breed’s genetic diversity. Different parameters can be used to describe genetic diversity or genetic variation, including marker-based and pedigree-based methods. Inbreeding rate and effective population size (N_e) are considered the most suitable. There are different ways of calculating these parameters, which influences the threshold of what is acceptable or not. However, there is a consensus that the inbreeding rate per generation should be below 1%, and that the N_e should be at least 50-100 for the population to be sustainable and above 500 for future evolutionary potential. If the N_e is below 50, the risk of reduction in genetic variation and inbreeding depression increases. This increases the risk of infertility and poorer overall health and performance – reducing their resilience.

Inbreeding will occur and rise in closed populations where related animals are mated. The rate of inbreeding per generation (i.e., how quickly the inbreeding increases) influences the population fitness, which is why the establishment of informative and adequate management strategies that consider genetic variation is essential for ensuring sustainable populations. Improvement in management strategies and tools for controlling inbreeding such as optimum contribution selection (OCS) and the EVA program have largely contributed to reductions in the generational inbreeding rates for various populations (including the Jutland horse, the Jutland cattle and the Faroese horse).

Most of the Nordic breeds have a small population size and or have gone through historical bottlenecks which has led to higher rates of inbreeding. In some Nordic populations the inbreeding rate has been successfully managed, and there is minimal increase per generation. A few examples are the Norwegian Dole horse, the Fjord horse and the Nordland/Lyngen horse (Norsk Hestesenter, 2022).