Save historic huts of Antartica!

Wellington, Jan 22: The first man to climb Mount Everest hassaid Britain must do more to save and restore historic huts inAntarctica built by early explorers Ernest Shackleton and Robert FalconScott.

Edmund Hillary said Britain should help fund and restore the 100-year-old huts.

''To find now that these relics of a heroic age are barelysupported by Britain is just a little bit disappointing,'' the NewZealand Press Association quoted Hillary as saying during a visit toNew Zealand's Scott Base in Antarctica.

Hillary, now 87 years old, helped to set up the base 50 years ago, after he had led a British expedition to the South Pole.

The New Zealand based and funded Antarctic Heritage Trust isleading efforts to restore the huts, which are as the explorers leftthem, but deteriorating because of the harsh conditions.

The crude wooden huts, complete with clothing, furniture, cannedfood, magazines and biological specimens left by the originalexplorers, are being damaged by gale force winds, water, snow and saltair.

There are four huts in Antarctica put up by early explorers --Britons Ernest Shackleton's and Robert Scott's huts at Cape Royds,Scott's hut at Cape Evans, and Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink's hut atCape Adare.

Reuters>