Antarctic tourism is putting pressure on the world's last
great wilderness and must be carefully managed, say scientists.
)
Antarctic Tourism has quadrupled to 32,000 in the past eight
years.
Most tourists visit by ship, with obvious environmental and
safety issues, and this also brings the threat of alien species moving in, as
has happened so often in recent history on virgin lands worldwide.
In the recent Antarctic Consultative Meeting, in securely
sub-snowline Edinburgh, about 300 scientists, diplomats and government advisers
discussed the risks to Antarctica not only from tourism but also from global
warming and commercial exploitation.
"Recent evidence indicates that regional melting, north
and south, is taking place at a worrying rate, and faster than we
thought," Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told
reporters. "The consequence for the future of mean sea level alone
justifies the polar regions as the subject of special scientific attention."
He explained that the way in which creatures and plants had adapted to some of
the most extreme temperatures on earth gave insight into evolutionary adaptation.
This is Big Important Contemporary Science as well as an Environmental Issue.
International Polar Year (for both the Artic and Antarctic) begins March 1, 2007.
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