Outcry over South Pole tourism plan
A report in NZ’s The Dominion Post says that a travel website promoting a sightseeing tour along Antarctica’s South Pole road has angered those who believe the world’s last wilderness should remain untouched.
The 10-day tour, proposed for 2008, is being touted by an extreme adventure group on their website www.drivearoundtheworld.com.
Canterbury University Senior Fellow of Antarctic Studies Alan Hemmings said the proposed tour by the San Francisco-based group was hugely concerning, and he urged American authorities – who built the road – to place an immediate ban on tourists using the route.
Work began on the controversial 1600-kilometre road in 2001 and it was completed in early 2006 after an American team reached the South Pole in a traverse tractor towing 100 tonnes of cargo.
This summer, it is understood three return trips between McMurdo Base and the South Pole were made by a tractor unit towing a series of cargo sleds and accommodation cabooses, some several hundred metres long.
Dr Hemmings said there was obviously a desire among many to travel the South Pole road, “piggy-backing” the American convoys and by allowing some to travel the route, demand would increase, he said, adding, “This is the last truly unspoilt wild frontier of the planet and do we really need a road going smack bang through the middle of it?”
The United States National Science Foundation could not be contacted for comment, with American authorities granted consent to build the road after passing stringent environmental tests and all 30 Antarctic Treaty signatories, including New Zealand, accepted the road – which was built to reduce the volume of air freighting to the South Pole, as one 100-tonne tractor convoy carries the equivalent cargo load of 11 Hercules aircraft.
In 2004, Sir Edmund Hillary described the road as terrible and urged the United States to continue air freighting material to the South Pole.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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