A tourist has been fined the equivalent of £900 for getting to close to a walrus in Arctic Norway.
Members of the public saw the man walk out onto an ice floe in the Svalberg Archipeligo on Wednesday where he ‘disturbed a walrus that was lying the ice’, say authorities.
It is against the law to cause unnecessary disturbance to wildlife in Svalberg, which lies halfway between the northern coast of mainland Norway and the North Pole.
After being reported to authorities, the man, from Poland, was taken to the governor’s office and fined 12,500 Norwegian Kroner
He accepted the penalty and paid it, the BBC reports.
‘The governor encourages everyone to keep a good distance from walruses so that they are not disturbed and so that no danger to people occur,’ the governor’s office said in a statement.
Police prosecutor Magnus Rindal Fredriksen said the incident happened ‘very close to Longyearbyen, at the bottom of the fjord’ and that the tourist had arrived in the area on the same day.
It’s thought he was trying to take a photo of the animal.
Walruses were hunted to a point where they almost became extinct in the Svalberg Archipelago until they became protected by law in 1952.
But despite this protection the numbers of walruses in the area are still low and they remain on a list of species going extinct in Norway called the Norwegian National Red List.
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