By Nora Buli
AAFJORD, Norway (Reuters) – Norway should dismantle two large wind farms that were recently stripped of their licences for jeopardising traditional reindeer husbandry, herders from the indigenous Sami community said on Friday.
The country’s supreme court last month ruled that the Storheia and Roan wind farms, located on the Fosen peninsula in central Norway, violated herders’ rights under international conventions, and found their operating permits invalid.
“There is no doubt. The turbines are illegal, so they have to come down, sooner or later,” Fosen reindeer herding district leader Terje Haugen told Reuters after meeting with the country’s energy minister, who visited the wind farms on Friday.
But the court’s verdict did not spell out what should happen next to the 151 turbines or the dozens of kilometres (miles) of roads built to facilitate the construction, and the owners of the wind farms still hope for a solution that will allow them to stay.
Reindeer herders in the Nordic country argue that the sight and sound of giant wind turbines frighten their animals and thus disrupt age-old traditions.
The turbines remain in operation for the time being, however, and the government is seeking to resolve what it has described as a complex legal and political quandary.
(Reporting by Nora Buli, writing by Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche)
