Qualla: Russian Arctic National Park

Russian Arctic National Park: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nixette, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Vladimir Putin visited Novaya Zemlya in 2010, the year after the national park was established, he looked around at the landscape and described it as a "giant rubbish tip." He was not wrong. Decades of Soviet military and industrial occupation had left behind a quarter million barrels of petroleum products, a million abandoned metal drums, rusting radar installations, dilapidated vehicles, and grounded aircraft. Creating Russian Arctic National Park had been the easy part. Cleaning it up would take three years and 1.5 billion rubles.

Image: Nixette | CC BY-SA 4.0

Russian Arctic National Park: A Park Born of Political Will

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nixette, CC BY-SA 4.0. Plans for protecting northern Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land circulated through Russian government channels for years before becoming reality. When the park was officially established on June 15, 2009, the ceremony included optimistic statements about Arctic tourism — but Fra...

Image: Nixette | CC BY-SA 4.0

Russian Arctic National Park: The Long Work of Cleaning Up

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nixette, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Soviet military left a particular kind of legacy in the high Arctic: infrastructure built without any plan for its removal, in a place where nothing biodegrades quickly and everything rusts. The cleanup project that began in 2012 confronted this reality at scale. Workers remo...

Image: Nixette | CC BY-SA 4.0

Russian Arctic National Park: Where the Megafauna Still Roam

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nixette, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beneath the Cold War archaeology, the ecology of Russian Arctic National Park is remarkable. The park protects critical habitat for polar bears and serves as a key calving ground for bowhead whales — one of the longest-lived animals on Earth, with individuals documented at over 2...

Image: Nixette | CC BY-SA 4.0

Russian Arctic National Park: The Ice at the Center

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nixette, CC BY-SA 4.0. The heart of the park is glacial. Severny Island's ice cap covers forty percent of that island's surface and is the largest glacier by area and by volume in Europe — an Arctic fact that surprises many European visitors who picture their continent ending at the Ural Mountains. Fra...

Image: Nixette | CC BY-SA 4.0