Governor Andrey Chibis signed a decree on the creation of the Teriberka Nature Park. The total area of the new park will be about 2.5 thousand hectares.

This became known at an operational meeting, where the head of the region thanked all colleagues who are currently engaged in the topic of tourism and environmental conservation.

"This is necessary, on the one hand, to ensure the preservation of nature in the territory, which is very popular among residents of our country, residents of our region, and foreign tourists. On the other hand, this will allow us to develop the tourist infrastructure here very actively, but carefully from the point of view of nature safety, according to clear rules. The task of the nature park will be to regulate the process of visiting this territory and preserving the natural complex," Andrei Chibis said.

The head of the region added that employees of the Murmansk Region government, the Tourism Committee and the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Fisheries of the Murmansk Region, the Directorate of Specially Protected Natural Territories of Regional Significance of the Murmansk Region and the World Wildlife Fund participated in the design of the park.

Volunteer students of the Clean Arctic project participating in an environmental clean-up in the Yakut village of Tiksi have already collected about 70 tons of scrap metal, and for all three days of the project's launch mission it is expected to collect up to 300 tons of metal and 250 cubic meters of other waste, the head of Yakutia Aisen Nikolaev said.

"In Yakutia, the Arctic territories account for more than 80% of scrap metal accumulations. Cleaning the coast of the Arctic Ocean from rusty barrels and metal structures is a task that can only be solved by the combined efforts of government, business and the volunteer community. Without "general cleaning" in the Arctic, the importance of which the President of the country has repeatedly drawn attention to, it is impossible to talk about new standards of quality of life for people living and working here," Nikolaev said.

He said that in total, within the framework of the Clean Arctic project, about 100 thousand tons of scrap will be exported from the Arctic regions of the republic over the next five years.

"This will require not only to assemble it locally, but also to create a collection and transportation system - from reception points to logistics issues. The first batch of cargo collected by volunteers with the help of local residents in Tiksi will be delivered by barge to the Nizhny Bestyakh railway station, from where it will be sent for melting," the head of Yakutia said.

Scientists will sum up the results of a permafrost seed storage experiment that was launched in Yakutia in the 1970s. Specialists from the Vavilov Federal Research Center All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources were responsible for conducting the study.

Developed in the 1970s, the relevant technology makes it possible to maintain subzero underground temperatures all year round and to effectively preserve the seeds. An initial check shows that biomaterials, stored for 40 years underground, boast 95 percent germination rates.

“Scientists from the Vavilov Federal Research Center All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources will visit Yakutia and will analyze the results of an experiment that has lasted over 40 years. A project to assess the possibility of using layers of permafrost to store seeds under from the collection of the Vavilov Institute was launched by this center, the Melnikov Permafrost Institute and the Safonov Yakutia Scientific Research Institute of Agriculture of the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch in the 1970s,” the press service of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Government said.

Today, over 11,000 seed samples of agricultural and wild plants are stored in Yakutia at a depth of 11 meters. As the depository maintains natural subzero permafrost temperatures, this makes it possible to minimize electricity expenses and to spend just 4,000 rubles for this purpose annually.

Earlier, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeyev suggested that the Arctic Council should establish an international cryogenic seed storage facility in Yakutia because the existing Svalbard Global Seed Vault on West Spitsbergen Island where all countries store samples of plant seeds is beginning to disintegrate because of the melting permafrost.

On June 10, the first stage of the "Master of the Arctic" expedition ended in Moscow, at Domodedovo Airport. The team of participants spent 26 days in the expedition.

In total, the specialists completed about eight routes, each for an average of 5-6 hours, in search of polar bears and marine mammals.

"Exactly how many of them [animals] will be known after processing all the flight materials, and this is about 100 thousand photos and the same number of images from the thermal imager. Bears, seals and walruses are definitely there! But the musk oxen were seen only with their eyes, they were not reflected in the photos, maybe because they are not marine mammals, but land ones," scientists suggest.

In addition to monitoring polar bears, experts also held several meetings with residents of Tiksi, showed a film on the results of last year's expedition and conducted environmental and space lessons in two schools.

In particular, Dmitry Glazov, the head of the scientific group, introduced schoolchildren to the peculiarities of the life of marine mammals, and hero of Russia, test pilot and cosmonaut Valery Tokarev - to the secrets of space.

On the same day, June 10, in Arkhangelsk, three expeditions at once go to the Mikhail Somov NPP to the Franz Josef Land archipelago, where they will continue searching for polar bears with the help of a helicopter.

"There are 5-6 days to go by sea to Novaya Zemlya and further to the archipelago of Franz Josef Land Islands, where the team will have to find polar bears with the help of a helicopter, put on satellite collars and take biological samples. It is curious that it is possible to fasten the collar only on a female polar bear - the neck of a huge predator is not suitable for such "ornaments", it is too voluminous," the organizers of the expedition say.

They also add that the satellite collar will help scientists trace the migration path of the red book predator, understand where it spends different seasons, where it sets up a den and forages for food. The analyses will complement the animal health map of the Arctic region. By the way, this time the bears will be checked for the presence of coronavirus.

The area of the ozone hole, which is observed by the European sentinel-5P satellite, launched into orbit by the Russian Rokot carrier rocket from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in 2017, is about 1 million square kilometers.
Scientists from DLR attribute its appearance to unusual atmospheric conditions, including freezing temperatures in the stratosphere, which led to a sharp drop in ozone levels.
Ozone in the stratosphere protects life on Earth from the ultraviolet rays of sunlight. Over Antarctica, the ozone hole is formed annually in the fall and lasts 3-4 months. However, this phenomenon is now much larger than previously observed.