Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic Ocean will be able to accept more tourists soon.
This was announced by the Secretary of United Nation Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev
at an international conference Security and Cooperation in the Arctic: New
Frontiers, which was held in Murmansk.
Having visited the most northern frontier post Nagurskoe at the island of Alexandra, Mr. Patrushev announced that
this facility will be opened for tourists, including foreigners.
Today to the archipelago come 3-4
icebreakers each year, all in all they carry about 500 tourists, 70% of which
are foreigners. During the day excursions landings are made on rubber
motorboats or helicopters, and the infrastructure is replaced by the icebreaker
itself. Therefore, as told by RATA-news’ destination specialists, the main
issue of tourism development on the territories bordering on the North Pole is
making safe and affordable transportation logistic and infrastructure.
“Arctic tourism is interesting and perspective,
and Franz Josef Land is the most attractive arctic island area of Russia”,
believes the General Director of the Animate Nature Club, Oleg Prodan. Now there’s
only a closed border post – a modern building with the entire amenity, means of
communication and so on. Mr. Prodan says that in fact, it could be used as a
base camp for small tourist groups. Creating a full-fledged infrastructure on
the islands is rather venturesome, but still possible, the expert is confident.
On the other hand, even 500 tourists a year bring enormous anthropogenic load
on the archipelago. “It is necessary to create admissible conditions, safe
routes both for people and the arctic nature. Imagine that, a man walks on the
moss of the cape Flora, and it won't grow back for one
hundred years.” – warns Mr. Prodan. However, if these questions are approached
competently and professionally, all these questions can and must be solved.
“Now transportation component of travelling
to the islands of the Arctic Ocean is very
expensive, that’s why this type of recreation will not become mass in the
nearest future”, - says Oleg Prodan. According to him, a new type of tourism
which is connected with climate warming can be observed for the last two years;
yachts of Russians and foreign seafarers come to the archipelago in summer.
Sales and Marketing Director of Poseidon
Expeditions Company, Maksim Chernishev, is more careful in evaluating prospects
of "conquering" of Franz Josef Land
by tourists. To his mind, the idea itself is interesting, tourists - are always
good. But they should be taken there, logistics should be thought over. Mr.
Chernishev agrees with his colleague that the main thing is not to harm the
nature of the archipelago, to follow the balance between the tourism development
and keeping nature’s inviolability: “To do this, people’s meddling should be
minimal, as there are walruses, white bears and thousands of rare birds in the Arctic.”