diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 9797b91e8be..e2c424c25de 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ What's New in Python 3.1.3?
 Core and Builtins
 -----------------
 
+- Issue #10077: Fix logging of site module errors at startup.
+
 - Issue #9713, #10114: Parser functions (eg. PyParser_ASTFromFile) expects
   filenames encoded to the filesystem encoding with surrogateescape error
   handler (to support undecodable bytes), instead of UTF-8 in strict mode.
diff --git a/Python/pythonrun.c b/Python/pythonrun.c
index d08d0edd138..98cad37799f 100644
--- a/Python/pythonrun.c
+++ b/Python/pythonrun.c
@@ -721,14 +721,17 @@ initsite(void)
         if (f == NULL || f == Py_None)
             return;
         if (Py_VerboseFlag) {
+            PyObject *type, *value, *traceback;
+            PyErr_Fetch(&type, &value, &traceback);
             PyFile_WriteString(
                 "'import site' failed; traceback:\n", f);
+            PyErr_Restore(type, value, traceback);
             PyErr_Print();
         }
         else {
+            PyErr_Clear();
             PyFile_WriteString(
               "'import site' failed; use -v for traceback\n", f);
-            PyErr_Clear();
         }
     }
     else {