Editorial
Stabroek News
April 29, 2001

The preliminary expedition to map out the best route to scale Mount Roraima from the Guyana side is currently underway. It is proposed that on May 1 the expedition proper will set out with the aim of opening a permanent hiking route to that portion of the mountain which lies within Guyana's boundaries, and of eventually climbing the rock face itself, known as the Great Prow of Roraima. To the best of anyone's knowledge the only climbers to reach the summit from our side were some British professional mountaineers in the early 1970s. From their accounts we know that it was not an easy ascent, and one hopes that the present team have familiarised themselves with all the possible difficulties they might encounter, and have ensured that they are suitably equipped and supported to make the attempt safely.

A one-off climb of Roraima is one thing, however, and opening a permanent hiking route to the face with adventure tourism in mind is quite another. In our edition of February 18, 2001, Sunday Stabroek's gardening columnist, Mr John Warrington, said that there was at the present time no "compelling need to collect more living material from Mt Roraima," and there were "compelling reasons to deter any but the most serious research scientists."

He went on to say that the fragile plant and wild life in the area had evolved over millions of years and was worth protecting, and that the rewards to be gained from tourism were hardly worth the cost to the environment. Mr Warrington, himself a botanist, wrote that his first acquaintance with this country was when he led expeditions to collect botanical specimens for research at London's Kew Gardens as well as Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and that in pursuit of that end he had made three official visits and one private visit to Roraima. All three institutions, he continued, had "developed facilities to house Roraima's living plants, aping as near as possible its unique environment, and thus enabling scientists to carry out extended studies into its remarkable flora."

The columnist also outlined the difficulties to be encountered for the traveller who ventures there. Apart from being one of the wettest places on earth, the hike in from the Waruma river to the mountain takes five days and covers 40 miles. Similarly the journey out again. "The logistics of supply," he went on, "are challenging to say the least, and the consequences of emergencies frightening." Needless to say, the hike is through virgin forest.

Clearly where the eco-system in the immediate vicinity of Mount Roraima is concerned, Guyana is blessed with something really quite special. As Mr Warrington said, much of the flora (and, it might be added some of the fauna too) is endemic to the area. If any species are inadvertently destroyed by upsetting the delicate ecological balance, therefore, they will disappear from the planet's inventory of plant and animal life entirely. No one denies the commendable motives of those engaged in the current exercise to establish a hiker's trail through the area, it is just that their efforts are probably misplaced. In pursuing one good, they will be destroying another, and greater one.

Certainly a zone such as this should be protected, and no attempt to maintain a permanent trail should be made unless the plans have first been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. One day in the unknown future, one hopes, our own botanical gardens or the University of Guyana would be in a position to recreate the environment of Roraima in a glasshouse on the coast, where its unique species could be studied, and where ordinary Guyanese could go and see them. In the meantime, the Government of Guyana should not take its custodial responsibilites for the special biological inheritance of the circum-Roraima forest lightly; it should not give permission for the development of adventure tourism there, and apart from the local Amerindians, should in general only allow serious researchers to enter. This is one case where conservation comes first.