In the remote mountains between Sweden and Norway, amongst the icy peaks and the boreal forests, lives an animal that belongs to another age. One that against all odds has found its freedom in the legal gray zone of this remote border region. And forgotten by most, their population grew to a peak of 35 individuals. But since then, it has declined significantly and is now at risk of disappearing for good. Except for some occasional reports, no one really knows how many are actually left. And that is why we are setting out on a mission to go deep into the Scandinavian mountains to find the last Swedish muskoxin. We want to know if any of them are left. And if so, our end is to put them back on the map, to shine a

spotlight on their existence, to bring a scientific understanding to their situation and hope that in due time we will be allowed to intervene and save these iconic animals from their doom. Welcome back to the Musco saga. This is uh not the kind of weather I uh I wish for at the end of August. It is raining and it's like 10° C and we are going camping looking for muskox in the middle of nowhere. Um, so this will be quite interesting. Let's hope that uh that things improve this time. My story begins with a 9-hour road trip across the border from Norway to Sweden down through the southern corner of Lapland and into the province of Haria Dalan

where the team was getting ready for the expedition. The next morning, we had an early breakfast and got ready for the ride up. It's all necessary. So, uh I'm bringing a fair amount of things, but uh nothing that uh yeah, that I can't at least carry. This is our uh our ride deeper into the mountains. And uh I got to say it, it looks pretty sturdy. Time to uh load up now so that we uh we can get on our way. This was a new way to get around for me. Kind of nervy, but cool. And above all, a functional way to get all our gear 20 kilometers deep into the mountains and also a means to look for the muskox when we arrive.

Yeah, we're going to have probably, I want to say, less than 2 minutes to do the scouting around the area where they might be. That voice you hear is Yonas, a Swedish filmmaker joining us on this expedition. And this is not his first time out this year as he was part of the winter expeditions which got out there using snowmobiles and gave us a teaser that these muskox are still around. We found them well or at least one. I just still find it so incredible to just fathom the fact that they this is the place where they would spend their whole winter. And this is a pretty good day. The w the sun is out. The wind is not too strong. So we're lucky in that sense. Just imagine what this place is like during the bad days.

During the three winter surveys, the team found only a lonely cow on a mountaintop on one of the three occasions. But at least they were able to collect some muskox poo, which was one of the objectives that I'll explain in a bit. Still, this left us with a lot of questions about how many other ones are left, if any at all, which is what makes the expeditions this summer quite important. So, back in the helicopter, we didn't even get the 2 minutes Yonas was hoping for because we got nowhere near to our landing zone. So, yeah, we've had to uh touch down a little bit. Uh yeah, further down than we would have wished. We're about a kilometer away from where uh you It's about a kilometer, right, Jonas?

Uh just over a kilometer. Also, the problem is that we're uh we're much lower in elevation, so we're going have to climb up a kilome. We have to climb a fair bit and that is all because of uh yeah the lowlying fog and rain that you can see in the back there. So uh yeah, it's the weather's come back to bite us, but that's life. We'll we'll figure it out. We'll navigate it. After sheltering the gear in the tent, the helicopter came back with the rest of the crew. Hello. Welcome. Thank you. Lovely spot we have here. After finding our bearings, we started the arduous journey to where we want to set up basic camp. Now, at this point, you might wonder who signs up to hike in the wind, the fog, and the rain through

soggy ground and under reindeer fences. So, let me do some introductions. You've already met Yonas, who is a Swedish filmmaker with an interest in the welfare of these animals. He shot some of the footage you are seeing today and he also documented his yearslong search for this herd on his YouTube channel which I've linked in the description for you to check out. Then next we have Yens from Vriet who together with his team is gluing the various partners of this group together. And finally we have the aliens. We have research alien who saw our previous video here on YouTube and started a research project about the muskox for her master thesis and muskox center alien who takes care of the muskox we

visited in 2023 including the wonderful offspring of Brutus the famous muskox we covered in the last video who has unfortunately passed away since then but his calves live on and I'm sure they would love to have a chance to live in the wild like their father once did now all of these people are part of a loose coalition of organizations called Muskox 2030, which aims to see if something can be done to help this herd. And at this stage, without the permits to release new animals, the best we all can do is to perform the first inventory since 2010 and to start gathering some scientific data about them. All of this requires organizational capacity and funding, of course. And some organizations in this group contribute

with time, some contribute with equipment, and some with money. We contributed with €5,000 for the expedition costs in 2024, covering things like helicopters and snowmobiles, and €10,000 for the costs in 2025 to cover again some expedition costs and also some research we will talk about in a bit. And as usual, the only reason we have the ability to do this is because of our Mossy Earth members, people like you who watch our videos and decide to support us with a monthly subscription. We then use the money to build our own rewing teams to create long-term landscape focused rewing projects in Indonesia, Portugal, Scotland, and Ecuador. And we also support targeted projects with partner organizations in places like Colorado in

the US, the Danube in Slovakia, the wetlands of Iceland, the mountains of Romania, the deserts of Benin, and of course here in Sweden with this Muskox project among many, many others. To do this work, we always set aside 80% of the funding we received. But last quarter, we actually achieved 91.04% towards impact if you count the additional grants we were awarded, or even 94.61% if you count the work done by our video team in awareness raising as some organizations out there tend to do. So really, a large portion of your money goes towards doing something worthwhile. And if you already enjoy being a member, you could also consider referring Mossy Earth to a friend or a family member or getting them a

membership or course as a gift this Christmas. I think it's a really, really cool gift. Again, you can find everything easily at mossy.ear. The link is in the description and in a pinned comment down below. Now, back at our expedition, we had a bit of a rough start as it took us nearly 5 hours to haul all the gear and set up the base camp. But by then, the weather had cleared a bit and we could finally get searching. So, uh, we've, um, split into two groups to try to maximize our chances of still finding, uh, the muskox today. And I'm here with the two alens. And, uh, we have a here we have muskox center Ellen and Research Ellen. And, uh, we're going to do our best to, uh, try to find the muskox in our area.

So, so that this expedition can be a success. It was great to be back out on these mountains. They might look bare, but once you look a bit more closely, you find all kinds of cool life hiding amongst the boulders. It is a microcosm of weirdly colorful and strangely shaped lychans mixed with all kinds of wonderful flowers, small plants, mosses, fungi, and tiny dwarf birch trees. So, what did you say this one was called? G bloomer. That's a funny name. Yellow sprout bloomer. I don't know. Lumar gir loomer. Okay. Wow. That's quite a nice name.

Yeah. Just rolls off the tongue. Yeah. We also find lots of really cool berry bearing plants such as the alpine barberry, the crobury, the blueberry, and this juicy golden wonder of nature, the cloudberry. Now, thankfully for us, among these plants, we also started finding some signs of what we were looking for. You can see that it's dry and starting to dull be more dull. So, summer poo, but not fresh poo. Yeah. So, that was a sign they were here a month ago, which got us excited they might be nearby. Rocks. Yeah. Rocks. Strange rocks.

Muskox. Rocks. Every rock here looked like a damn muskox. And when we finally saw something moving, we got really excited. But it turned out to be no more than just reindeer, who actually came in for a closer look, which allowed me to take a minute to appreciate these semi-w wild animals and also take some nice photos, including this reindeer here that was starting to shed its antlers. It looks kind of crazy. But crucially, what this also allowed us is to collect some reindeer poo, which we need for aliens research. So I'm looking at seed dispersal from the Swedish muscles population and then from reindeer that are in the same area. So I collect the dropping samples uh and also do a vegetation analysis of the environment

just to see uh what vascular plants are here and not and then I bring the droppings uh to a greenhouse and there I grow them to see what seeds what viable seeds they disperse. In the time since this expedition, Elen has finished her master thesis based on this research. The conclusion is that neither the muskox nor the reindeer are too important in dispersing seeds up here in the mountains. However, from the muskox samples taken from the captive ones at the center, it does seem to suggest that when they go down into the forested areas in the summer, they might play a bigger role in this as they dispersed more species and a lot more seeds per poo. But to conclude this properly, more

research is needed on the actual wild muskox amongst the trees there. They'll be really hard to find, which is why it would be ideal to GPS collar at least one of the animals, but for now, we do not have permission to do so. And you might rightly wonder, what is the point of all of this research? And I think it is actually really important. And it essentially boils down to creating more clarity around the presence of these animals in this landscape in the hopes that they'll be accepted legally and we will be allowed to assist the herd with fresh releases. And for now, if you're curious to read on, I added Ilen's thesis to the description below. But let's get back on the muskox hunt where

things turn trickier. So the more up we go, the colder it gets, of course. And uh feel a little bit of rain and fog. We searched and searched some more, but after some hours of wandering around in the fog, we had to call it a day. In total, I walked 16 km, including around 800 m of climbing, but no muskox to show for it. Sleep came easy, of course, and the night was tranquil. And the next day, after preparing my coffee, I popped out of the tent to a beautiful view. Classic Swedish breakfast. Yeah, absolutely. This is what we do every day. After our pleasant porridge at dawn, I headed out with Yens and Muskok center alien for another loop. But I could not get much talking done this day because

of the insane winds blasting us on the mountain side. We searched and searched for around 8 hours. But with strong weather approaching, we had to call it a day after another loop of 16 km with another 800 m of climate. Then the nighttime brought the storm that was promised. And I always find it cozy to sleep in a tent in the rain. But in the morning, I found out that not everyone had that experience. Was awful. But I searched for shelter and I invaded Yen's personal space and moved in here. But everything I own is so wet. is wet.

Yeah. Ready for the next storm. Do you not downwind? This will never be a tent again. No, I don't think so. This is what you Well, I think it was good that I didn't stay in the tent. Yes. Yeah, we spent the morning searching a loop of around 8 km, but by the afternoon it was time for our scheduled heli ride back out. So this time we failed. We got nothing besides the few poo samples for Alien and no sign of the herd whatsoever. It was really disappointing for me not to be able to see them, but that is why we planned a total of five expeditions this summer. And another time we got a bit more luck. So yesterday we got out pretty late. We

started at around lunchtime because of fog and we hiked for about 7 or 8 kilometers through this terrain and we're about to turn around and then finally decided to hike up this last little hill to look through the binoculars and I spotted five or six uh dark spots on a patch of snow which turn out to be the muskox. On this expedition and on others, Yonas and the rest of the team were able to see and study the herd properly, which was amazing news for us. I wasn't there to see it, but just looking at this footage makes me really happy. It is so great to see these animals free and wild on the mountain side, swimming in the lakes and grazing on the various plants available here. In total, the team counted eight

muskox in the summer with a ninth bull observed in the late autumn. Slightly more than the 2010 survey, but clearly not good compared with a population peak of around 35. All of this got summarized in an annual report of the activities by the project team and in a published paper by Sophia from the University of Tulus that collaborated with our expeditions. I've added them both to the description should you wish to read further. But amongst the doom and gloom, there were also some good news. Among the herd was a subad adult individual who must have been born not too long ago. And crucially for us, there was also a wonderfully fluffy and healthylooking cough. And from what Yens told me, in the spring of this year, they found one more cough, which really means that

while they are struggling, the population is still viable and probably worth fighting for. So, where do we go from here? The dream is to get this animal recognized as a wild Swedish animal and to get the permission to do some releases from the captive muskox population with new genes flowing in to boost this wild herd. The muskox center is ready, the zoos are ready, but the permissions are missing. So the game plan now is to continue bringing clarity through data with these three research projects we are hoping to get done in 2026 and through the continuous monitoring of the herd. hopefully with a GPS collar to help find them in trickier conditions. And then of course we have to continue advocating with both the

local authorities and at a national level and hope that this herd will be legally recognized. And I personally think that the mountains would be a richer place with these animals around. And seeing this little one gives me hope because where there is a young one starting on a new life, there must be hope that the future will be better. And remember to support our work here and at all our other projects, you can become a member at mossy.ear. It is what makes everything possible for us. Until next time, cheers.