by the Barents Sea and so winter temperatures are higher and there is less snow. Precipitation is during the year, half of which falls during the growing season. Not until June does the ice melt. Some lakes in the eastern part of the Wilderness are damaged by acid rain from the Norilsk Nickel plant in Nikel, Russia. History The area was populated in the Stone Age by Inari Sami people shortly after the last glacial period ended about 8000 BC. The first documents from the area are tax records from the 16th century. The Inari Sami originally subsisted on hunting, gathering and especially fishing; later they began to complement this by reindeer husbandry, and later still by farming and herding cattle and sheep. The area belonged to the Inari Siida beginning in the Middle Ages. Until the border was closed in 1852, the Sami from Norway came during winter to herd their reindeer. The closing of the border caused some Norwegian Sami to settle in the area and continue with reindeer husbandry. This caught on among the Inari Sami, and the amount of husbandry increased during the 20th century. People in the area traveled up Lake Inari and onwards to the coast of Finnmark, Norway, to fish during summer. Records of markets in Finnmark date back to the 16th century, and in the 1880s about 150 people traveled to the coast each year. Logging in the southern part boomed during the 1920s, when logs were driven down the Pasvik River to Elvenes and Jakobsnes in Norway. Previously there were birch forests in the fells, but in the 1960s their leaves were eaten by the caterpillar of the autumnal moth, leaving the fells barren. The construction of the Paatsjoki River Hydroelectric Plants starting in the 1940s had a strong negative effect on the fish population; in 1976 the authorities therefore enforced the obligatory introduction of fish in Lake Inari. The twelve wilderness areas in Lapland were all created in 1991 to protect both the natural wilderness and the Sami culture. These areas combined cover an area of , where such activities as road construction and mining are prohibited, as is logging in some areas. Pasvik–Inari Trilateral Park was established in several steps: Øvre Pasvik National Park was created in 1970, the Russian part of Pasvik Nature Reserve was established in 1992, and the Norwegian part created the following year. In 2003