Keep hotels off ice, say officials

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

New Zealand is urging other countries to ban hotels in Antarctica before it is too late.

Trevor Hughes, head of the Antarctic policy unit in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told the New Zealand Antarctic Conference at Waikato University yesterday that any tourists based in hotels rather than on cruise ships would threaten the Antarctic Treaty system, which has protected the region for more than 40 years.

"We have been thinking the unthinkable," he said. "If one did have hotels being developed in Antarctica, such as across the way from Scott Base, and if you had people flown in on package tours, you would start creating a general public that are not under the control of any of the base commanders.

"If the general public started getting up to mischief and committing crimes, who would be responsible for jurisdiction?

"In the Ross Dependency, we would say we are responsible for arresting someone who committed a murder against another tourist, but if the Government of that person's country disagreed, we could have a very interesting situation.

"The treaty system is not equipped to deal with jurisdiction over people who are not members of national programmes."

He said the issue was discussed at a recent conference in Norway, and New Zealand planned to raise it again at this year's Antarctic Treaty meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, next month.

The Norwegian conference agreed on one practical step - refusing to give permits for visitors to Antarctica unless their insurance policies covered the potential cost of search and rescue and medical evacuation.

But New Zealand wanted to go further and ban land-based tourism completely.

He said this would be discussed at the Cape Town meeting, but agreement would be difficult.

"We are in the early stages of consciousness-raising," he said.

Antarctica New Zealand's environmental manager Dr Neil Gilbert said the Cape Town meeting would also consider two environmental impact reports.

One report looks at a controversial United States proposal to build a traverse, or ice road, between McMurdo Station and the South Pole, and the other is on the construction of a giant underground observatory at the South Pole to observe neutrinos, the sub-atomic particles that were fired out of the "Big Bang" when the universe began.

New Zealand will also propose a 15,000sq km "specially managed area" in the Dry Valleys, where footprints of explorers from almost 100 years ago can still be seen untouched by rain or snow.

Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said he hoped the Government would agree to ice-strengthen its proposed new naval cargo ship, due for delivery in 2007, so that it could watch for illegal fishing in the Ross Sea and help to ferry supplies to New Zealand scientists.

New Zealand is also working with Australia and 10 other countries on a proposed circumnavigation of Antarctica in 2007, repeating two earlier international surveys of marine life carried out in the 1920s and the 1980s.

"The big challenges are the krill fishery and toothfishing and the impact of climate change on the sea ice," Mr Sanson said.