page_title: History of Franz Josef Land
section_title: Internationalization
hierarchical_section_title: History of Franz Josef Land / Internationalization
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Ил-14, разбившийся в катастрофе 12 февраля 1981 года (Полярная геофизическая обсерватория им. Э. Кренкеля, о. Хейса, Земля Франца-Иосифа. Фото Слепнева Сергея, сентябрь 2007) English: Polar Geophysical Observatory named Krenkel, Heiss Island, Franz Josef Land. Photo by Sergey Slepnev, 2007, September
context_page_description: Franz Josef Land, an uninhabited archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean, Barents Sea and Kara Sea, may have been discovered by the 1865 expedition of the Norwegian sealing vessel Spidsbergen captained by Nils Fredrik Rønnbeck. However, the discovery was never announced and the existence of the territory only came to public notice following the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872, which named the archipelago in honor of Franz Joseph I of Austria. Benjamin Leigh Smith led the next expedition in 1880, which continued the work of the first expeditions in investigating the southern and central parts of the archipelago. Concurrent expeditions followed in 1896, Nansen's Fram expedition and the Jackson–Harmsworth Expedition, which met by accident. These two journeys explored the northern area and the flanks of Franz Josef Land.
  The next series of expeditions used the archipelago as a base for attempts to reach the North Pole. The first, carried out by Walter Wellman in 1898, was followed the next year by the voyage of the Stella Polare then from 1901 to 1905 the Ziegler Polar Expedition took place.
context_section_description: The Soviet Union allowed international activities on the archipelago from 1990, with non-Russians given fairly straightforward access. A cooperative venture between the Academy of Sciences, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the Polish Academy of Sciences was the first of several archaeological expeditions organized by the Institute of Culture in Moscow. That year also saw the reopening of the base at Tikhaya Bay organized jointly by the three countries.
  The base on Graham Bell Island was abandoned during the early 1990s while military activities at Nagurskoye were reduced to that of a border post, and the number of people stationed at Krenkel Observatory reduced from seventy to a dozen. The archipelago and the surrounding waters were declared a nature reserve in April 1994, covering an area of 42,000 square kilometers (16,000 sq mi). This was protected as the more liberal zakaznik type of reserve. During this period several other federal subjects—Murmansk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai and Moscow—all offered to take over the administration of the islands.
  The opening of the archipelago also saw the introduction of tourism, most of which now takes place aboard Russian-operated icebreakers. Popular sites include Cape Flora, Tickaya Bay, Nansen and Johansen's hut as well as the Russian stations with tourists are commonly landed by helicopter. The Russian Armed Forces upgraded the base at Nagurskoye with the construction of a new barracks. In 2012 the Russian Air Force decided to reopen Green Bell Airfield as part of a series of reopenings of air bases in the Arctic.
  Plans for a national park covering northern Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land were launched in the 2000s. When the Russian Arctic National Park was established on 15 June 2009, Franz Josef Land and Victoria Island were excluded. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the archipelago in 2010, describing it as a "giant rubbish tip". By 2011 the national park had been expanded to include Franz Josef Land in a move to better accommodate tourism in the archipelago. From 2012, Russia commenced a 1.5 billion ruble, three-year clean-up project to remove more than 100,000 tonnes of waste which had accumulated during the Soviet era. These include a quarter million barrels of oil products, a million old barrels and dilapidated vehicles, radar installations and aircraft, among others.
caption: An Ilyushin Il-14 which crashed at Graham Bell Island in 1981
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