Lar­ge natu­re reser­ves in Eas­tern Sval­bard: “no ent­ry”

The ongo­ing dis­cus­sion con­cer­ning pos­si­ble clo­sure of most of eas­tern Sval­bard has been repor­ted repea­ted­ly on the­se pages (see for exam­p­le Decem­ber 2008). After a public hea­ring peri­od in late 2008, the Sys­sel­man­nen gave a nega­ti­ve vote to the strong rest­ric­tions that had been pro­po­sed by DN (Nor­we­gi­an direc­to­ra­te for natu­re admi­nis­tra­ti­on). Fol­lo­wing the mot­to “we vote until we get the result that we want”, DN puts the same pro­po­sal for­ward again for ano­ther public hea­ring peri­od. Opi­ni­ons can be sent to the Sys­sel­man­nen (cont­act the Sys­sel­man­nen) until 01 Sep­tem­ber 2009. A new Sys­sel­man­nen will ascend the “thro­ne” in Lon­gye­ar­by­en in Sep­tem­ber 2009. Evil to him who evil thinks…

Accor­ding to DN’s pro­po­sal, landings in the lar­ge natu­re reser­ves in eas­tern Sval­bard can only be made at 16 dedi­ca­ted locations/smaller are­as, effec­tively clo­sing many hundred kilo­me­t­res of coast­li­ne and thus some­thing like 40 % of the archi­pe­la­go to the inte­res­ted public.

Today, tou­rists can access most of the area in ques­ti­on with very few excep­ti­ons (Kong Karls Land). During a con­fe­rence orga­ni­zed by AECO in Lon­gye­ar­by­en in Octo­ber 2008, lea­ding Nor­we­gi­an sci­en­tists expres­sed that they did not con­sider tou­rism to pre­sent any serious envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns or con­flicts with sci­en­ti­fic work, not exclu­ding the need for recom­men­da­ti­ons or stric­ter regu­la­ti­ons when it comes, for exam­p­le, to indi­vi­du­al sites.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

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