Person fined $5,000 for using foghorn to disturb sleeping polar bear
By Charlotte Reck, CNN
(CNN) — A person has been fined for sounding a foghorn that woke a slumbering polar bear in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the region’s governor said in a statement.
The incident occurred earlier in August when someone used the booming, low-pitched horn, usually reserved for maritime warnings, aboard a vessel that had been sailing in a fjord in northern Svalbard, the Arctic island group that sits roughly halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
A fine of 50,000 kroner (around $5,300) was issued to the perpetrator on Thursday after the governor of Svalbard deemed the action to be disturbing to the polar bear and conducted intentionally.
Environmental protection laws in Svalbard state that it is prohibited to “unnecessarily disturb, lure or pursue polar bears,” a species protected by international law since 1973.
Regulations also stipulate that no one may get closer than 300 meters (984 feet) from a polar bear between July and February. Between March and June, the mammals’ typical mating season, the no-go zone increases to 500 meters (1,640 feet).
It has been illegal to hunt polar bears on Svalbard since they received protected status.
An estimated 3,000 polar bears live in the Svalbard and Barents Sea region — a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.
While many are known to migrate to the remote archipelago of Franz Josef Land in Russia’s northernmost territory, and the count of the apex predators on Svalbard varies throughout the year, around 300 remain there year-round.
Governor Lars Fause explained in his statement that when the vessel sailed past the animal “its occupants are said to have spotted a polar bear sleeping on land.”
“A person on board then used the ship’s foghorn, waking the animal, which moved to another location.”
The individual has agreed to pay the penalty.
Fines for disrupting animals in the Svalbard region have been handed out before.
In 2024, a tourist was fined 12,500 kroner ($1,300) after attempting to approach a walrus.
Members of the public alerted officials and the man was intercepted by the governor’s employees.
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