Rubbish from the Norwegian Armed Forces’ major exercise Nordic Response was left behind at the Stabbursdalen national park in Porsanger in Finnmark. Now the rubbish has been collected by the Norwegian Armed Forces.
It has been over a month since the military exercise ended, but the rubbish is still lying around, wrote Kronstadposten, NRK and Altaposten on Tuesday. Later in the day, press officer Johnny Karlsen at the Norwegian Armed Forces’ operational headquarters stated that the rubbish was brought down from the mountain on Monday.
– We will also go back when it has thawed more to check that there is no more rubbish left there, says Karlsen to Kronstadposten, which notified the Norwegian Defense Forces about the matter.
– We threw ourselves around immediately when we received a message from you yesterday and got it cleaned up. In other places too, things may appear that are not as they were before the exercise started. Then we hope that people will tip us off, says Karlsen.
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Half-eaten fennel leg
Turma food packaging, petrol cans, bio bags, soda and beer cans and half-eaten fen legs were among what was strewn about.
It was reindeer herding Sami Johan Mathis Kemi who first reported the litter, writes NRK. Kemi usually picks up trash he finds, but this time it was too much.
– I have two sleds behind me when I drive, but I wouldn’t have had room. It was so much. We pulled up a dozen petrol cans. We couldn’t pull up everyone in this crowd. We had to give up, he says.
– Routine failure
According to Karlsen, it was a failure in the routines that the rubbish was not collected sooner. He also says that with such a large exercise with 20,000 soldiers, it is not unnatural that this could happen.
– Having said that, we have a strong focus on environmental measures and clean up as soon as we are made aware that we have failed.
Tags: Swedish Armed Forces collected rubbish month exercise Finnmark
