ANTARCTICA鈥橲oldest settlement is being buried in penguin guano, according to the first conservation mission to the site in 12 years.
During his 1899 expedition, Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink erected two wooden huts on the remote, windswept beach at Cape Adare, due south of New Zealand. One hut was for storage and the other for living quarters. On visiting the site, Nigel Watson of New Zealand鈥檚 Antarctic Heritage Trust and his team found that the colony of half a million Ad茅lie penguins living around the buildings had taken their toll.
鈥淏oth are suffering from a build-up of guano up to a metre in places, which we hadn鈥檛 anticipated,鈥� says Watson. Penguin guano can cause damage in a number of ways 鈥� by providing nutrients for destructive fungi and by trapping moisture under the buildings, for example.
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Barriers erected to keep birds at bay have been successful at some heritage sites, but they wouldn鈥檛 work here, says Janet Hughes, a polar conservation expert at the University of Canberra. The region is ravaged by powerful 鈥渒atabatic鈥� winds that plunge down from the hills as the air cools at night, and these would quickly pile up ramps of pebbles and debris against the fences, she says. 鈥淭he penguins would just march over the top.鈥�
Developing strategies to combat the penguin guano, as well as salt damage to many of the 1200 artefacts inside and around the huts will be a challenge, Watson admits.
His team left Cape Adare on 9 February and headed for two other huts some 700 kilometres south. Used by Scott during his expeditions at the beginning of the 20th century, they are badly damaged by salt and in danger of collapse (New 杏吧原创, 9 November 2002, p 11).
It鈥檚 not just about preserving the huts though, says Watson. 鈥淭he site urgently needs attention from the point of view of wildlife as well as conservation,鈥� he says. 鈥淎 range of exposed artefacts at Cape Adare are in fact a hazard to local wildlife. We鈥檝e found that a significant number of penguins had met an untimely end in packing boxes,鈥� he says.