Poli­ce report against Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te

Pro­ba­b­ly for the first time, the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te (NPI) has been repor­ted to the poli­ce by a pri­va­te per­son (Olav Vik Sol­heim) for having anes­the­ti­zed and mark­ed a lar­ge num­ber of polar bears (150-200 per year in recent years). This includes fol­lo­wing the bears with heli­c­op­ters, a pro­ce­du­re that is not exact­ly easy on the animals.Soleim cri­ti­ci­zes that the num­bers of bears mark­ed are unneces­s­a­ri­ly high and that the­re is a strong ine­qua­li­ty bet­ween dif­fe­rent actors in the field: any­bo­dy who dis­turbs a polar bear, for exam­p­le with a snow mobi­le, risks hea­vy fines.

The Sys­sel­man­nen has drop­ped the case alre­a­dy after a cou­ple of days, becau­se a punis­ha­ble offence was dee­med unli­kely and becau­se it would have been very dif­fi­cult to inves­ti­ga­te the case for the poli­ce. Sol­heim has announ­ced that he wants to take fur­ther legal steps.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

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