Nordenskiöld Land National Park

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Closing some of the most popular snowmobiling areas surrounding Longyearbyen to motorized traffic this year to protect wildlife hunting and breeding areas is again being proposed by The Governor of Svalbard, similar to closures enacted for the past three years.

Except this year there’s an epidemic of protests due to a huge and obvious difference: the amount of traffic is likely to be drastically lower due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has already decimated tour operators for the past year without even more hardships being piled on due to access restrictions.

The affected areas (see maps below) are Billefjorden, Tempelfjorden and Van Mijenfjorden, including Rindersbukta and Fridtjovhamna. The deadline to submit comments to the governor is Tuesday.

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.

marksabbatini@yahoo.com

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