An unnecessary wake-up call for a sleeping polar bear has had costly consequences on Svalbard. A person on board a ship has been fined 50,000 Norwegian kroner – around 4,500 euros – after deliberately sounding the ship’s horn to wake a resting polar bear.
The incident took place in early August in a fjord in the north of Spitsbergen. The people on board had spotted a polar bear sleeping on land. One person then deliberately sounded the loud ship’s horn. The animal awoke and subsequently retreated to another location.
The authorities on Svalbard deemed the behaviour to be a deliberate disturbance of a protected wild animal. The person responsible accepted the fine. No details regarding their identity or nationality have been published.
Strict regulations apply on Svalbard to protect polar bears. Under the archipelago’s environmental legislation, the animals must not be unnecessarily disturbed, lured or pursued. Polar bears have been protected on Svalbard since 1972.
This unusual case illustrates how rigorously the authorities are now cracking down on disturbances to Arctic wildlife. With tourism on the rise, the aim is to prevent encounters with polar bears from being provoked for the sake of better photos or more spectacular sightings.
Visitors, too, must therefore follow a simple rule: Polar bears should be observed from a safe distance and their natural behaviour should not be influenced. Whilst the disturbance was over quickly for the sleeping polar bear, for the person who was unwittingly woken up, it proved to be extremely costly.
Rosamaria Kubny, PolarJournal