Hillary Challenge

Social Studies Online

Everest and Changes to the Environment

Thirty years ago conservation hadn't really been heard of. On our 1953 expedition we just threw our empty tins and trash into a heap on the rock-covered ice at Base Camp. We cut huge quantities of the beautiful juniper shrubs for our fires, and on the South Col at twenty-six thousand feet we left a scattered pile of empty oxygen bottles, torn tents, and remnants of food containers. And the expeditions of today aren't much better in this respect either. Mount Everest is littered with junk from the bottom to the top--there are even a few bodies lying around.

Since those years I have spent a great deal of time in the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal. I have learned to understand the people, to enjoy their friendship and cheerfulness, and I have gained an appreciation of some of their problems. One thing that has really concerned me has been the destruction of their natural environment that is taking place.

Population pressures are forcing the farmers higher and higher up the mountainsides to find land where they can plant their crops. A large proportion of the forest cover has been destroyed in order to clear land for cultivation, to supply the local people with fuel, and to produce firewood for trekking and climbing groups. The Nepalese are experts at ingenious and laborious terracing of their hillsides, but when the monsoon rains come the surface soil is washed down into the streams; it pours into the great Ganges River, flows out into the Bay of Bengal, and is finally deposited in the Indian Ocean. That valuable soil will never return.

The situation is indeed becoming desperate--desperate not only for Nepal but for many similar countries in the Third World. It is my belief that all of us in the developed countries must accept some degree of responsibility for any massive destruction of the environment which may occur on our globe. What can we do to help?

Well, an example of what we can do is the Sagarmatha National Park. This lies on the south side of Mount Everest. It was established about seven years ago and it covers a very extensive area. About three thousand mountain people live in this national park, but each year double that number of foreign visitors come to the area. Over the years these visitors have used great quantities of the limited supply of firewood for cooking and heating, although efforts are now being made to persuade them to use kerosene for fuel. In this park a small amount of reforestation has begun, using New Zealand government funds, but this support has now come to an end. Virtually the only funds now available come from the Canadian Hillary Foundation. We contribute a very modest $10,000 to $15,000 a year, but much greater sums are needed if this superb park is not to seriously decline and become a barren eroded desert. There are many such cases around the world.

So I have become a keen, and, I hope, a practical environmentalist. I am concerned not only about the deterioration of our environment in the more affluent developed countries but in the poorer countries--those that simply don't have the finances to help themselves--as well. I worry about the pollution in our great cities and in our many waterways. I even worry about the Antarctic and about the potential dangers facing that great remote continent.

Antarctica and Changes to the Environment

I have spent much time in the Antarctic; I was in McMurdo Sound only a year ago. I discovered then that all the talk was about the oil potential, the possible mineral resources, and farming and krill. Only the difficulties of access have prevented an even greater concentration on commercially-oriented investigation and exploitation--seeking out some of the last miserable remnants of oil under the surface of the earth. I heard little about the protection of this superbly beautiful environment, although much good work has been done by scientists in the past and, in truth, is still being done. I dread the thought of drilling being done through the movable pack ice with the attendant possibilities of an enormous oil spill and the destruction of millions of Antarctic creatures.

The Antarctic Treaty has produced a demilitarized, unpolluted wildlife sanctuary dedicated to free scientific co-operation. But now major political problems are looming. The possibility of economic development has turned the attention of many countries to the Antarctic, countries who have not signed the Antarctic Treaty, and conservation could become a minor priority in the search for wealth. When I was deeply involved in Antarctic exploration I regarded the South Pole as a continent of science and adventure. The world needs places like that, and I hope that it stays that way.

The moments you remember most clearly are not always the most dramatic ones--certainly, the summit of Everest was important to me, but there were other occasions that at the time they happened were equally impressive.