Svalbard’s polar bears are doing well – the popu­la­ti­on is sta­ble or even gro­wing slight­ly, many of the ani­mals are in good phy­si­cal con­di­ti­on. This is Jon Aars descrip­ti­on of the cur­rent situa­ti­on, see pre­vious artic­le.

But the­re are other opi­ni­ons. This is Mor­ten Jørgensen’s cri­ti­cal rep­ly to Jon Aars descrip­ti­on of the sta­te Svalbard’s polar bears curr­ent­ly are in. Mor­ten Jør­gen­sen is the aut­hor of the book Polar bears: bel­oved and betray­ed.

Polar bear on Prins Karls For­land.

Mor­ten Jørgensen’s cri­ti­cal rep­ly to Jon Aars

To the state­ments made by the lea­ding polar bear rese­ar­cher at the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te, Jon Aars, as he has been quo­ted in the artic­le Ekstre­mår for sjøi­sen: – Har smel­tet raskt gjen­nom som­me­ren

I feel com­pel­led to make this com­ment:

The­re is a ten­den­cy in polar bear manage­ment to push the con­se­quen­ces of the many pro­blems that the spe­ci­es face into the future. Some­ti­mes the near future. But never right now. Becau­se that would mean that the hun­ting would have to stop, and the mana­gers can­not bring them­sel­ves to even begin to face that decis­i­on. This lais­sez-fai­re atti­tu­de of pro­jec­tion of today’s issues into the future spills over into sci­ence.

Latest, Jon Aars claims that the polar bears in Sval­bard for now are doing ok – but will face toug­her times in the deca­des to come. He even goes so far as to say that the local popu­la­ti­on is sta­ble and may be gro­wing.

He has abso­lut­e­ly no sci­en­ti­fic basis for making such state­ments.

The latest attempt at coun­ting the polar bears of Sval­bard led to the con­clu­si­on that the­re is no sta­tis­ti­cal signi­fi­cant chan­ge in the popu­la­ti­on sin­ce the pre­vious “count”. In other words, Jon Aars’ opti­mism is based not in sci­en­ti­fic data, but in … ? I guess only he knows.

Also: The pre­su­med sta­bi­li­ty of the popu­la­ti­on, based on the data from tho­se last two counts, is NOT a good sign. It is actual­ly almost evi­dence that the local polar bear popu­la­ti­on on Sval­bard is in dire straits. How so? Well, the other main­stream mista­ke which Jon Aars makes is to for­get the his­to­ri­cal con­text. If ever­y­thing was just fine, the local polar bear popu­la­ti­on in Sval­bard should in recent deca­des have shown, and should still be show­ing, a signi­fi­cant increase – based on their cur­rent local pro­tec­tion sta­tus after long peri­ods of extre­me over-hun­ting. The very fact that the popu­la­ti­on is still lin­ge­ring at a meager 200-500 or so bears is a clear indi­ca­ti­on that the dis­in­te­gra­ti­on of their main habi­tat is caus­ing the local popu­la­ti­on to be under mas­si­ve stress.

The Sval­bard polar bear popu­la­ti­on is clinging on. And must be pre­su­med to be facing a steep decli­ne soon. To bring forth unfoun­ded opti­mism is not good sci­ence, but only ser­ves to fal­se­ly appease tho­se who think that urgent action is not nee­ded for the polar bear to recei­ve full pro­tec­tion.

Mor­ten Jør­gen­sen

Octo­ber 30, 2024.

The drift is in the Arc­tic Oce­an is shrin­king and shrin­king, brea­king one nega­ti­ve record after the other, but nevert­hel­ess, Svalbard’s polar bears are doing well so far – that is, in very short words, the essence of a press release by the Nor­we­gi­an Meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal Insti­tu­te that includes some infor­ma­ti­on pro­vi­ded by Jon Aars, polar bear sci­en­tist within the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te.

Dra­stic sea ice loss

The sea ice in the Arc­tic Oce­an is being lost a a dra­ma­tic pace. That is the unequi­vo­cal mes­sa­ge of a wealth of sci­en­ti­fic data, from satel­li­tes and other. In 2023, the loss of arc­tic drift ice amoun­ted to 3 mil­li­on squa­re kilo­me­t­res com­pared to the refe­rence peri­od 1981-2010, and the nega­ti­ve trend is con­ti­nuing in spi­te of a good ice win­ter 2023-24 in Spits­ber­gen.

Polar bears: the Sval­bard popu­la­ti­on

That has obvious­ly con­se­quen­ces for polar bears. The­re are appro­xi­m­ate­ly 250 polar bears living in the Sval­bard archi­pe­la­go. The num­ber 3000 that is often men­tio­ned in this con­text refers to the much lar­ger area of Sval­bard and Franz Josef Land inclu­ding sur­roun­ding sea are­as.

One of appro­xi­m­ate­ly 250 polar bears who spend their lives most­ly on land in Sval­bard.

But Svalbard’s polar bears are doing well despi­te less ice and shorter peri­ods with fro­zen fjords and ice-bound coasts. The­se bears are used to life on land and have, at least to some degree, deve­lo­ped tech­ni­ques to tap food-sources less depen­dent on sea ice or fjord ice. The­re are, for exam­p­le, tho­se bears that have deve­lo­ped the skill to hunt reinde­er.

The local popu­la­ti­on is sta­ble or even gro­wing slight­ly, accor­ding to Aars, and they are most­ly in good phy­si­cal shape.

Are­as tra­di­tio­nal used by pregnant fema­les to give birth such as Kong Karls Land and Hopen have lost their signi­fi­can­ce in this con­text becau­se of now unre­lia­ble ice con­di­ti­ons in the­se are­as. It is belie­ved that the­se fema­les now use are­as fur­ther nor­the­ast, such as Franz Josef Land in the wes­tern Rus­si­an arc­tic.

Polar bears: the ocea­nic (drift ice) popu­la­ti­on

This so far sta­ble or even slight­ly posi­ti­ve deve­lo­p­ment appli­es to polar bears in Sval­bard with a lar­ge­ly land-based way of life. Things may well be dif­fe­rent for polar bears fol­lo­wing what we might con­sider a more clas­si­cal way of life for a polar bear, in the drift ice far from land.

Fri­day saw this year’s final sun­ri­se and sun­set; both were kind of hap­pe­ning at the same time and behind moun­ta­ins any­way, hence invi­si­ble from Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The polar night star­ted on Satur­day, the first day wit­hout the sun coming abo­ve the hori­zon at all – until mid Febru­ary! The polar night, almost four months long, is, howe­ver, not com­ple­te­ly dark. The real dark peri­od (mør­ket­id) won’t start until ear­ly Decem­ber. Until then and in the last weeks of the polar night, the­re are a cou­ple of hours of twi­light mid day. Click here for more about mid­night sun and polar night.

The first day wit­hout sun: ear­ly after­noon at mine 3.

So now, with four months wit­hout sun to come, you could inde­ed get the Blues – and you do the­se days in Lon­gye­ar­by­en 😎 the Dark Sea­son Blues Fes­ti­val is hap­pe­ning the­se days, as every year in late Octo­ber, when Nor­we­gi­an and inter­na­tio­nal Blues acts come to Lon­gye­ar­by­en to share the various stages in town.

Dark Sea­son Blues Fes­ti­val in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. Stein Stok­ke & the Engi­ne at work in mine 3.

One of the­se stages is at mine 3 abo­ve the air­port. Mine 3 used to be a real coal mine, but aban­do­ned in 1996, it is now used as a visi­tor mine and the sur­face instal­la­ti­ons are occa­sio­nal­ly used for cul­tu­ral events. This Satur­day, one could enjoy some hear­ty-hef­ty Blues the­re play­ed by Stein Stok­ke & The Engi­ne, a Blues band with a good name in Nor­way.

That is defi­ni­te­ly some­thing Lon­gye­ar­by­en shares with many other muni­ci­pa­li­ties in Nor­way and else­whe­re: public bud­gets are under stress, cos­ts are on the rise ever­y­whe­re and inco­me does not always meet expec­ta­ti­ons. In Lon­gye­ar­by­en, for exam­p­le, the com­mu­nal art gal­lery Nord­o­ver did and does not yield the eco­no­mic result that had been hoped for. In the past, the gal­lery used to be in Nyby­en (the upper part of Lon­gye­ar­by­en). Now it resi­des in the same buil­ding as the super­mar­ket Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken, with a rather incon­spi­cuous ent­rance on the building’s nor­t­hern side that many tou­rists appar­ent­ly don’t see (or don’t care much about). When the gal­lery was in Nyby­en, it used to be a popu­lar stop on gui­ded bus tours for crui­se­ship tou­rists.

Clo­sing Sval­bard­hal­len (swim­ming & sports hall) for a lon­ger peri­od last sum­mer becau­se of legio­nella-loa­ded water didn’t help eit­her. As a result, a defi­cit of one mil­li­on kro­ner is expec­ted for the sec­tor lei­su­re and cul­tu­re in 2024 – the lar­gest sin­gle defi­cit in Longyearbyen’s public spen­dings this year. The total defi­cit amounts to 5.3 mil­li­on kro­ner (ca. 440,000 Euro) in 2024.

Lon­gye­ar­by­en in Octo­ber 2024: no snow, no money (the lat­ter is not quite true).

Part of the defi­cit can be accoun­ted for by means of inter­nal res­truc­tu­ring. The hig­hest sum is to be paid by the youn­gest mem­bers of the muni­ci­pa­li­ty: the bud­get of the com­mu­nal kin­der­gar­tens is now cut by 500,000 kro­ner. On the other side, the muni­ci­pa­li­ty of Lon­gye­ar­by­en still has a total of 70 mil­li­on kro­ner sit­ting in various bank accounts, as Sval­bard­pos­ten reports.

As a result, Lon­gye­ar­by­en is still much bet­ter off than many muni­ci­pa­li­ties in main­land Nor­way: for exam­p­le, Sen­ja (near 15,000 inha­bi­tants) south of Trom­sø has to deal with a defi­cit of 50 mil­li­on kro­ner in 2024, Trom­sø its­elf even lacks 259 mil­li­on kro­ner in last year’s bud­get, accor­ding to NRK. Until now, the finan­ces of 2023 Nor­we­gi­an muni­ci­pa­li­ties are under sta­te super­vi­si­on.

The “TV-aks­jon” is a big event any­whe­re in Nor­way, but in Lon­gye­ar­by­en it is big­ger than most other places. It is a cha­ri­ty event crea­ted by the Nor­we­gi­an news plat­form NRK. In Lon­gye­ar­by­en, it ran­ges from child­ren kno­cking on doors to coll­ec­tion money over an open day at school with sales of cake, books, theat­re plays and so on to the main event, a cha­ri­ty auc­tion that was held on Sun­day (20 Octo­ber) evening in the cul­tu­re house.

Pri­va­te indi­vi­du­als, com­pa­nies and orga­ni­sa­ti­ons dona­ted a total of 107 items that were auc­tion­ed for a good cau­se, which this time bene­fits child­ren with can­cer. The good cau­se is a dif­fe­rent one every year.

The “TV-aks­jon” in the Cul­tu­re House in Lon­gye­ar­by­en: an auc­tion sup­port­ing a good cau­se.

The list of items was long and included a good num­ber of very inte­res­t­ing offers. It ran­ged from small stuff, not neces­s­a­ri­ly adre­na­lin-kicking items such as tie­pins and cuff links dona­ted by the mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske Spits­ber­gen Kul­kom­pa­ni, over various acti­vi­ties offe­red by ocal tour ope­ra­tors to exclu­si­ve events such as clim­bing the smo­ke pipe of the disu­s­ed coal power plant.

A hap­py bidder can join the priest on a heli­c­op­ter flight for a church ser­vice at the Polish rese­arch sta­ti­on in Horn­sund next year for 25,000 kro­ner.

The pro­ba­b­ly most exci­ting sale of the night was the very last item: the fur of a polar bear that was shot last year in Kross­fjord. Dona­ted by the Sys­sel­mes­ter, the ham­mer final­ly fell at 112,000 kro­ner (a good 9400 Euro). The ham­mer in ques­ti­on, by the way, was the famous “Fau­se-ham­mer”, dona­ted years ago by Sys­sel­mes­ter Lars Fau­se after he (Fau­se) inad­ver­t­ent­ly had made a hole into a chair leg with an unin­ten­ded pis­tol shot. Fau­se pre­sen­ted hims­elf both honest and humo­rous, first pay­ing the fine that comes for negli­gent hand­ling of fire­arms and then, being auc­tion­eer at a TV aks­jon hims­elf years ago, using this ham­mer that had been craf­ted from the chair leg in ques­ti­on. This time, the ham­mer was hand­led by Ron­ny Brun­voll, mana­ger of Visit Sval­bard.

The polar bear fur was auc­tion­ed for 112,000 kro­ner.

The hig­hest pri­ce, howe­ver, was paid for a trip to Ny-Åle­sund for 10 per­sons, inclu­ding flight the­re and back from Lon­gye­ar­by­en, one night and three cour­se din­ner in “Amundsen’s Vil­la”, then and now repre­sen­ta­ti­ve accom­mo­da­ti­on for the direc­tor of Kings Bay, the sta­te-owned com­pa­ny that owns and runs Ny-Åle­sund. The suc­cessful bidder put no less than 150,200 kro­ner on the table. But who wouldn’t love to join on that trip? 🙂

The­re is some ambi­ti­on in Lon­gye­ar­by­en to be num­ber one on the list of places regar­ding dona­ti­on per capi­ta (resi­dent). Despi­te of the remar­kab­le sum of 2.5 mil­li­on kro­ner, which inde­ed is a record for Lon­gye­ar­by­en, it wasn’t enough for the num­ber one place of this list, howe­ver: this amount cor­re­sponds to 1043.62 kro­ner, less then half of what was given by the com­mu­ni­ty of Rødøy (1139 resi­dents, south of Bodø) with 2311.46 kro­ner, accor­ding to offi­ci­al sta­tis­tics. Con­side­ring abso­lu­te num­bers, the lar­ge cities of Oslo, Ber­gen and Trond­heim (in this order) take the first places any­way. The total sum of this year’s TV aks­jon amounts to an impres­si­ve 367 mil­li­on kro­ner, of which 50 mil­li­on kro­ner were given by the Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment.

Nor­way ban­ned the use of dro­nes for all Rus­si­an citi­zens in Nor­we­gi­an airspace after the start of the full-sca­le Rus­si­an inva­si­on of the Ukrai­ne. In the fol­lo­wing month in 2022, seve­ral Rus­si­ans were nevert­hel­ess caught fly­ing dro­nes in Nor­way, inclu­ding cases with a real sus­pi­ci­on of espio­na­ge.

Dro­nes in Spits­ber­gen: not allo­wed for Rus­si­ans sin­ce 2022.

Other cases may be of a more harm­less natu­re, and it was pre­su­ma­b­ly such a case whe­re the Rus­si­an-Bri­tish citi­zen Andrey Yaku­nin now was not only absol­ved, but actual­ly recei­ves a high com­pen­sa­ti­on from the Nor­we­gi­an sta­te.

Yaku­nin, a wealt­hy busi­ness­man, is said to have indi­rect con­nec­tions to Putin through his father. In the sum­mer of 2022, he was tra­vel­ling in Spits­ber­gen with a yacht. It was during that trip that he had used a dro­ne seve­ral times. In the fol­lo­wing tri­als, he reli­ed on his Bri­tish citi­zen­ship and on hims­elf being una­wa­re of the ban on dro­nes for Rus­si­ans. Yaku­nin spent 51 days in pri­son on remand.

A sus­pi­ci­on of espio­na­ge appears to have been ruled out. The images taken with the dro­nes seem to have been of a harm­less, tou­ristic natu­re.

Now Yaku­nin was dis­sol­ved in the court of last resourt. Pre­vious tri­als had also ended with acquit­tal, but the public pro­se­cu­tor had cho­sen to appeal.

Accor­ding to the latest ver­dict, Yaku­nin will get com­pen­sa­ti­on for a signi­fi­cant part of the cos­ts for his lawy­ers and for his time in pri­son, altog­e­ther 4.1 mil­li­on kro­ner (just abo­ve 380,000 Euro), as Barents­ob­ser­ver and NRK repor­ted.

The new dou­ble calen­der “Spits­ber­gen and Green­land 2025” is available!

The new Dou­ble calen­dar 2025: Spits­ber­gen & Green­land.

As usu­al, it is a dou­ble calen­dar. That means that you don’t get 12 (actual­ly, 14) pages which blank back side, but all pages are put to good use on both sides, so you get 24 beau­tiful images with no com­prom­mi­se in terms of size for the 12 months! Of cour­se, the­re are 12 pic­tures “Spits­ber­gen” – after all, the calen­dar star­ted its life in 2013 as a Spits­ber­gen calen­dar. And in 2025, the second the­me is Green­land, or east Green­land, to be pre­cise, name­ly the ama­zing Score­s­by­sund.

The new Dou­ble calen­dar 2025: Green­land is the fea­tured second the­me.

You will find more infor­ma­ti­on inclu­ding pre­views of all sides, pri­ces and the opti­on to order the new calen­dar here in the Spits­ber­gen-Sval­bard online shop.

My Spits­ber­gen (+) calen­der comes every year with a com­ple­te­ly new sel­ec­tion of images, obvious­ly in limi­t­ed edi­ti­on. If you want to do me a huge favour then lea­ve a rating (review) in the pro­duct descrip­ti­on if you like it. That helps immense­ly in today’s inter­net world. And while you are at it, may­be you can also dona­te some stars and a few – no need for long texts! – fri­end­ly words with other books that you may have or other­wi­se know. The new Spits­ber­gen pho­to book Cold beau­ty does, for exam­p­le, not yet have any ratings, which means it remains a bit silent and hid­den in a dark cor­ner of the inter­net. Some­thing you can chan­ge with a mous­eclick or two …

I wish you a good weekend, plea­sant and safe, whe­re­ver you are! Gree­tings from Lon­gye­ar­by­en, Rolf Stan­ge ❄️🙂

Sval­bard geo­po­li­tics – a big thing. How is it real­ly about sove­reig­n­ty, is Sval­bard real­ly part of Nor­way or some kind of inter­na­tio­nal area? How is it with the Rus­si­an sett­le­ments, what kind of ide­as might Putin have, and what about the sea are­as … big ques­ti­ons. And the­re are a lot of misun­derstan­dings about them out the­re.

I have writ­ten a lot about all of that on the­se pages, it is not about repea­ting the­se con­tents here. It is about a pre­sen­ta­ti­on that was held last night (Tues­day, 08 Octo­ber) and that you can see on You­tube (click here). If this link does not work, then copy

https://polarshort.de/90jiu

and pas­te it into your brow­ser. In any case, start at 37 minu­tes, it is the com­ple­te live­stream that was star­ted well befo­re the actual­ly pre­sen­ta­ti­on actual­ly star­ted

This includes a good bit of what you should know about Sval­bard geo­po­li­tics.

The pre­sen­ta­ti­on by Andre­as Øst­ha­gen from the Fri­dt­jof Nan­sen Insti­tu­te explains the poli­tics and cle­ars some com­mon misun­derstan­dings. After a break (fast for­ward the You­tube ver­si­on), Tiril Vold Han­sen from the Nord Uni­ver­si­ty offers her per­spec­ti­ve on recent issues inclu­ding new regu­la­ti­ons for tou­rism. Inte­res­t­ing stuff. Then mayor Ter­je Aune­vik rounds the evening off.

The pre­sen­ta­ti­ons were arran­ged by Sval­bard Muse­um. Thank you for that!

It is, to start with, just an admi­nis­tra­ti­ve act: the inha­bi­tants of Barents­burg are now being regis­tered by Nor­we­gi­an aut­ho­ri­ties in the regis­ter of inha­bi­tants of Sval­bard. Until now, this was only done for inha­bi­tants of Lon­gye­ar­by­en; now this prac­ti­ce will also be used in the other sett­le­ments. Next to Barents­burg and Pyra­mi­den, this also includes the Polish rese­arch sta­ti­on in Horn­sund and Ny-Åle­sund, in any case pro­vi­ded a mini­mum stay of half a year for anyo­ne to be regis­tered as a local.

Nor­we­gi­an aut­ho­ri­ties want a bet­ter over­view of who is living in Sval­bard. In exch­an­ge, tho­se regis­tered as locals do get cer­tain rights, inclu­ding more oppor­tu­ni­ties within fishing and hun­ting, wider-ran­ging rights to tra­vel free­ly over lar­ger parts of the archi­pe­la­go and no envi­ron­men­tal fee on flight tickets to Lon­gye­ar­by­en (which is gene­ral­ly included in any flight ticket to Lon­gye­ar­by­en). Locals can also buy a hut or flat; some­thing that is, howe­ver, likely to remain a dream for most, con­side­ring that the­re are hard­ly any offers and, if any, pri­ces are usual­ly bey­ond of what most can pay.

Locals in Barents­burgs. Reinde­er will, howe­ver not be regis­tered.

For many howe­ver, it may make a dif­fe­rence to get a per­so­nal num­ber (for non-Nor­we­gi­an citi­zens: a so-cal­led D-num­ber) which is essen­ti­al for things like ope­ning a bank account in Nor­way, get­ting a mobi­le pho­ne con­tract or pret­ty much any kind of insu­rance, regis­ter a car or snow mobi­le or being able to use the pay­ment app Vipps which is very com­mon in Nor­way. Some may also app­re­cia­te the oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy alco­hol more free­ly in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Accor­ding to infor­ma­ti­on pro­vi­ded by the Rus­si­an mining coma­ny Trust Ark­ti­ku­gol, the­re are as of 01 Sep­tem­ber 340 peo­p­le living in the Rus­si­an sett­le­ments, by far most of them in Barents­burg. Among­st the­re, the­re are 202 men, 109 women and 29 child­ren. 219 peo­p­le have Rus­si­an pass­ports and 57 are Ukrai­ni­ans. In addi­ti­on, the­re are 62 Tajiks, one Kazakh and one per­son from South Afri­ca, accor­ding to Sval­bard­pos­ten.