part of umbrella organizations said wedege such organizations include tourism authority visit svalbard and aeco the association of arctic expedition cruise operators which promotes sustainable tourism individual operations that are not part of a network and dont know the legislation properly and sometimes dont know the arctic properly can pose challenges for us a glacier is seen in svalbard norway this stock photo stockgetty images more protecting the world from tourists one of the founding members of aeco is norwegian tour operator hurtigruten which runs relatively small explorer cruises with ships of up to 500 people we think that with professionalism and having guidelines a field landing in svalbard can easily be done in a safe and environmentally sustainable way even with 100 guests at a time on shore said jrn henriksen head of polar operations and environment for the company by contrast he added an uneducated unprofessional crew on a sailing yacht can do quite a damage even with only four to five people nature tourists come to the svalbard archipelago to see the polar bears as well as its 170 species of flora various sea birds foxes voles and the unique svalbard reindeer another reason they come henriksen said is an increased interest in understanding global warming he described svalbad as a canary in the cage for the rest of the world when it comes to sensing global warmingrelated environmental changes one of those changes is less ice svalbard is also becoming more accessible because there is less ice and conventional ships can sail in this area henriksen said that easier transport also means cheaper prices that could attract more tourists as the years go on at the moment typical arctic expeditions can cost upwards of 1000 us per day to adapt to the changing tourism industry the government has rolled out additional legislation in recent years to protect svalbard which already has some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world according to aeco major nature reserves in the northeast can only be visited by ships with less than 200 passengers said wedege within those reserves you have some minor islands where youre not allowed to enter when birds are breeding the governments next plan is to create a fullscale management plan for longyearben where larger cruise ships dock it will include an assessment of the vulnerability of certain sites and determine what needs to be done to preserve them he explained there should be a debate whether we should shield larger areas from traffic wedege said or have more legislation saying how you can behave and how many people there should be