The ope­ning of the seed vault near Lon­gye­ar­by­en was the occa­si­on when this Spits­ber­gen news site was star­ted, which is accor­din­gly also cele­bra­ting its 5th anni­ver­sa­ry the­se days. Three che­ers!

This here is ent­ry num­ber 245. The fre­quen­cy of ent­ries, near 1 per week in avera­ge, has cer­tain­ly increased in more revent times. Sin­ce num­ber 1, the over­all appearance of this web­site has chan­ged com­ple­te­ly. Its Eng­lish sec­tion has also quite recent­ly been moved to its own URL, spitsbergen-svalbard.com.

On 26 Febru­ary 2008, the glo­bal seed vault near Lon­gye­ar­by­en was offi­ci­al­ly ope­ned. The Nor­we­gi­an minis­ter for agri­cul­tu­re and food will be in Lon­gye­ar­by­en on Tues­day to mark the 5th anni­ver­sa­ry of the vault. The ope­ning in 2008 attrac­ted world­wi­de media atten­ti­on. Sin­ce then, more than 770,000 seed samples from most count­ries on the glo­be have been stored in the 3 halls, which are sup­po­sed to accom­mo­da­te at least 1.5 mil­li­on samples in the future. The natu­ral tem­pe­ra­tu­re of the sur­roun­ding per­ma­frost is -3 to -4 degrees cen­ti­gra­de. The tem­pe­ra­tu­re of the seed vault is con­stant­ly kept near -18 degrees.

The ent­rance is not far from the air­port. It is easi­ly seen and acces­si­ble by road. The inte­ri­or is not acces­si­ble for the gene­ral public.

The vault is lar­ge­ly finan­ced by, among­st others, the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­ti­on, but also by glo­bal com­pa­nies such as Mons­an­to, who are other­wi­se not known as guar­di­ans of bio­di­ver­si­ty.

Source: Nor­we­gi­sches Minis­te­ri­um für Land­wirt­schaft und Ernäh­rung