Huskies Become The Latest Victims To Overtourism

As the winter solstice approaches, the people in Finnish Lapland gear up for tourists that throng the place through the winter looking for quaint nature and husky rides.

In 2016, the major attraction for tourists who visited Finland’s northernmost region during winters was riding snowmobiles, in 2019 its husky sledding. Around 4,000 huskies are employed by the tourism industry in Lapland, compared to 660 reindeer.

The increase in the number of tourists coming in search of peace and quiet in Lapland has also increased the demand for husky rides, putting the dogs at risk. The risk is mostly attributed to the short tourist season and the poor welfare standards of the dogs.

Husky sledding is a seasonal activity that takes place only three to four months a year. However, the dogs need to be taken care of for the rest of the year, with farmers forced to pay for food, staff, and vets even without any source of income. Being unemployed for long periods means, these dogs can be victims of economic crisis.

According to Riitta Kiukas founder of Skafur Tour, one way to tackle this problem would be to get visitors to the place throughout the year.

"Tourists come for a very short period of time, around Christmas and New Year, and through to February," Kiukas told CNN. "But the dogs are living 12 months of the year. It's crucial to get visitors coming at slightly different times. They'd get better safaris because they'd be in smaller groups, and the dogs could work normally."

The dogs that were retired were euthanized, a common practice in Lapland as breeders and tour operators didn’t want to bear the economic burden of looking after them once they retired.

“We come from a situation where the industry developed out of racing, and people were looking for fast dogs so they bred lots and most wouldn't make the cut," says Anna McCormack who runs Hetta Huskies.

"They were treated more like farm commodities. That's changing, but it really does need to change [swiftly],” McCormack added.

Currently, tourists at peak visit the Lapland during the period from December to February. The numbers have been increasing constantly making it impossible for local breeders to meet the demands. To fill the gap, pop-in dog breeders, from all over Europe drop in and utilize their dogs for the husky rides.

"They operate for one or two months, then move on to the next place," said José-Carlos García-Rosell, senior lecturer in responsible tourism business at the University of Lapland, and project leader at Animal Tourism Finland, which monitors animal welfare.

"It's a way of getting money and feeding the animals, but they're difficult to identify," García-Rosell added.

However, the major issue with such breeders is that the welfare standards of the dogs are not trackable and they contribute nothing to the local economy.

The explosion in the number of tourists visiting Lapland has led to more clients coming forward demanding high welfare standards for them. However, for customers, it is about questioning the ethics of forcing a dog to work, which is not the problem here.

"For customers, it's not an easy thing to accept, seeing a dog in chains," said García-Rosell. "We compare them to our own dogs at home, and wouldn't like to have ours this way. And there's pressure from tour operators that dogs should be in kennels, rather than on chains. But that's not a good solution for an individual animal.”

Kiukas too believes that it is wrong to compare huskies to the pets they own at home.

"Huskies aren't like pets," says Kiukas. "They're born to run, and they are used to Arctic conditions."

“The dogs need to be brought out and stimulated through the year. They need training and running,” McCormack told CNN. Even she agrees that the situation of the huskies can be solved if people started visiting Lapland throughout the year, making it easier for the tour operators to maintain their dogs and to earn additional income to give good care to the huskies throughout the year.

“The industry is going in the right direction but the things animal rights people would highlight aren't necessarily the key things people need to look at," she added.