'China road to Everest bad for Himalayan ecology'

New Delhi, June 20: The World Wildlife Fund has expressed concern over the reports from Beijing that China was building a road up to the Mount Everest base camp, saying it would further affect the fragile ecological system of the region.

Dr Selja Wohra, working on the easter Himalayan system at WWF here, told sources that as far as she understood, it was not a new road, but even if they were just turning the existing one into a tarmac road, it was bad as it would make the Himalayas more accessible to vehicular traffic.

''Making mountain roads motorabie would increase tourist activities, which would increase pollution of the fresh water sources originating from the Himalayas,'' she said.

Creating access to mountain villages was good as it would improve the life of the people living there but creating accessibility for tourism was bad, she added.

China had yesterday announced that it was building a 108 km metalled road to the Mount Everest base camp, a height of 5,200 meters.

It had said the construction would begin within a week. The road would be used for taking the Olympic torch to the base camp from where the Chinese runners would carry it to the world's tallest peak.

Dr Selja said the impact on environment had been very harmful in the glacial areas where such roads were made in the past.

Reports from Beijing said that surveys and other studies had already been carried out in the mountainous region in Tibet for taking up the construction of the road.

China had earlier attracted criticism for its Beijing-Lhasa railway project, the highest railway in the world.

UNI