Inside the fight to bring the Saimaa ringed seal back from the brink of extinction

Efforts including human-made snowdrifts, genetic transfer and floating homes have brought seal numbers from 150 to more than 400, writes WS Roberts

In the 1980s there were less than 150 Saimaa ringed seals left (AFP/Getty)

Saimaa ringed seal mothers and their newborns have huddled in pupping lairs along the shores of this inland archipelago in southeastern Finland since time immemorial. Expectant females shape their lairs by putting a hole through the ice under a snowdrift, then burrow a chamber where they give birth and raise their young, well-protected from predators during the frigid winter months.

But now a new model is in service.

“We can get some individuals in artificial nests, and they learn to use those, and then the pups learn,” says Miina Auttila, a conservation specialist helping to drive efforts to protect the endangered seal. She is projecting an image of a fabricated lair onto a screen at the local office of Metsähallitus, Finland’s state-run land and waters department, here in the shoreline town of Savonlinna. The human-made lair looks like an igloo with skates, but it may be the seal’s best chance for survival because the snow the seal relies on for its lifecycle is in increasingly short supply due to climate change.