The life of Nenets people in this area is based on following the reindeer as they move along ancient routes around the tundra. To survive the winter the reindeer eat a type of lichen known as reindeer moss, which may be covered in metres of snow. The Khudi Nenets brigade we visited have a herd of some 4,000 reindeer, with roughly 1,500 of them belonging to the Khudi Nenets themselves. The remaining 2,500 are owned by the ‘state farms’. If Khudi Nenets people slaughter a state-farm animal, its value is docked from their salary, but they are allowed to slaughter their own reindeer.