TASS, August 14. 40 volunteers were chosen to participate in Arctic project after they took a training course in the Yamalo-Nenets Region, head of the Green Arctic ecology social organization Alexei Rudkovsky told TASS.
"Our project’s objective is to attract people to volunteer programs," he said. "We have received more than 100 applications from Russia’s 16 cities for participation in the Polar Spirit training program on the Zayachy Island."
"The participants were between 18 and 55, we have chosen 60 people, who took the training, and 40 of them will participate in Green Arctic’s projects," he added.
The training was organized at a tent camp near the Rai-Iz ophiolite massif in the polar Urals. The participants took a practical course in severe conditions. The organization’s head told TASS earlier, the training’s participants had organized a cleaning on the island.
The waste remains in the Yamalo-Nenets Region, including on the islands, after the first wave of Yamal’s intensive development in the 1960-1970s, when environmental standards in extraction of hydrocarbons were less strict.
Cleaning on the Bely Island is the biggest ecology project on Yamal. Over five years, the project’s participants - 150 volunteers from Russia’s 18 regions and from seven countries - cleaned more than 52 hectares, collected about 1,200 tonnes of scrap metal and other waste. Since 2014, the island is home for a research base, used by Russian and foreign scientists.
In 2017, ecology actions began on the Vilkitsky Island. In 2018, there will work two groups of volunteers, who will collect scrap metal and prepare sites for storing it.