05
Aug 2008 - A national park in Canada's Arctic
known as The Land That Never Melts has been
partly closed after record high temperatures
caused flash flooding, the BBC has reported.
Hiking trails were washed
away and 22 visitors had to be evacuated
by helicopter from the Auyuittuq National
Park on Baffin Island in Nunavut.
A combination of melting
permafrost and erosion means part of the
park will remain shut until geologists can
examine the damage.
The park consists mainly
of glaciers, rock and polar sea ice.
The Auyuittuq - which
means The Land that Never Melts - covers
an area of over 19,000sq km (7,340sq miles)
and is dominated by the huge Penny Ice Cap.
It is popular with hikers,
climbers and skiers.
Ancient trail
Pauline Scott, a spokeswoman
for Parks Canada, told the BBC News website
that after two weeks of record-breaking
hot weather in June the ice had "melted
at a phenomenal rate - we've never seen
this kind of phenomenon in almost 40 years
since the park was first opened".
Speaking from Iqaluit,
the capital of the Canadian Arctic territory
of Nunavut, Ms Scott said that due to the
massive amount of melting ice "huge
portions of what was formerly a 60km trail
in the park have completely gone".
Most visitors enter
the park via the Akshayuk Pass, a traditional
travel corridor used by the Inuit for thousands
of years.
Now the pass has been
closed as the glacier moraine that blocks
Crater Lake from spilling into the pass
is severely eroded, Ms Scott says, and threatens
to create a flash flood.
The federal parks department
has asked glaciologists and geologists for
advice on whether it is safe to reopen the
pass.
Ms Scott says the ground
in the park is now very unstable and cracks
are appearing along the trail.
She says it is thought
that the melting ice is linked to climate
change, as temperatures in parts of the
Arctic have risen far faster than the global
average in recent decades.
+ More
Indigenous training
offers hope of cutting poaching in Primorye
07 Aug 2008 - An indigenous
people famed for helping early Siberian
explorers survive in the wild are now passing
on their knowledge to the guardians of one
of the world’s most porous borders.
Leading the training
effort in north east Russia is Vasilii Dunkai,
leader of the scouting school in Krasnyi
Yar in northern Primorye.
The scouting school
was originally conceived to teach school
children survival skills and pass on ancestral
knowledge but the latest batch of students
includeds Russian border patrol forces.
Dunkai, who was joined
by Pavel Fomenko, WWF biodiversity conservation
coordinator in the region, specifically
sought to explain how to minimise conflicts
between humans and wildlife, such as tigers
and leopards native to the region, and to
identify signs of human and animal activity.
It is a role recalling
the most celebrated of the Nanai people,
Dersu Uzala, the hunter who passed into
Russian folkore teaching the explorer Russian
explorer Vladimir Arsenyev how to survive
Siberia in the early 20th Century.
“All of southwestern
Primorye is monitored by the border forces,
making them responsible for the protection
of rare breeds of species such as the Amur
leopard,” explains Pavel Fomenko, WWF biodiversity
conservation coordinator for the region.
“I hope that the lessons
learnt by the soldiers will help to protect
Russia’s valuable biological resources.”
The border patrol plays
a key role in seizing and preventing the
delivery of valuable animal parts, such
as tiger bones used for traditional medicine,
across the border into China.
“Monitoring this border
region, which stretches for 300 kilometres,
is an extremely difficult task,” said Fomenko.
“Annually, thousands
of snares are removed, and hundreds of Chinese
poachers are detained,” he added.
