{"id":592606,"date":"2026-08-14T02:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T02:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592606\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T02:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T02:14:11","slug":"person-fined-after-polar-bear-woken-by-ships-foghorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592606\/","title":{"rendered":"Person fined after polar bear woken by ship&#8217;s foghorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A person in Norway&#8217;s Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic has been fined 50,000 kroner (\u20ac4,559) for using a foghorn to wake a sleeping polar bear, local officials said.<\/p>\n<p>The incident took place earlier this month when a vessel was sailing in a fjord in northeastern Svalbard, around 1,000km from the North Pole.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Its occupants are said to have spotted a polar bear sleeping on land,&#8221; the governor of the territory said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A person on board then used the ship&#8217;s foghorn, waking the animal, which moved to another location,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A sign warns of polar bears\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0024d680-614.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Neither the identity nor nationality of the person has been disclosed.<\/p>\n<p>The governor&#8217;s office ordered the individual to pay the hefty fine, which the person agreed to do.<\/p>\n<p>Under local regulations &#8220;it is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract or pursue a polar bear&#8221;, which was declared a protected species in Svalbard in 1972.<\/p>\n<p>Some 260 polar bears were counted in the archipelago during the last scientific estimate, carried out in 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A person in Norway&#8217;s Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic has been fined 50,000 kroner (\u20ac4,559) for using a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-592606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}