Cave faces cable car crisis

QUANG BINH A United Nation’s advisory body has asked the government of Quang Binh province to explain its plan to install a cable car system to Son Doong Cave in a national park that became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003.
The cave and the planned cable car service is located in the UNESCO-recognised Phong Nha- Ke Bang National Park.
A chief cultural expert at the UNESCO office in Hanoi, Dr Duong Bich Hanh, told local media that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) made the request after a field mission in September to advise UNESCO on whether to continue recognising the park as a World Heritage site.
inside no 1The IUCN has warned that the cable car project could potentially affect the park’s status and has requested a thorough description of the cable car development project as well an environmental impact assessment.
“The UN agency has yet to announce its verdict on the project as the project is still in the planning stages,” she said adding that after the province submits its proposal, UNESCO will send experts to conduct further field research on how the project might impact on the park.
“Based on that, UNESCO will recommend whether Vietnam should or should not carry out the project.”
The province’s chairman, Nguyen Huu Hoai, was quoted as saying that if the central government and UNESCO don’t endorse the cable car system, they won’t proceed with the plan.
“The project will be carefully planned and won’t affect any caves, while also creating a breakthrough in the province’s tourism, adding thousands of jobs for locals, and in turn helping Quang Binh escape poverty.”
On 22 October, the government of Quang Binh province held a press conference to announce its plan to build a USD212-million cable car system to Son Doong Cave, which contains at least 150 individual grottos, a dense subterranean jungle, and several underground rivers.
The province had tapped the Sun Group, a real estate and resort developer in Danang to survey the Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, where Son Doong is located, before installing the system.
The two-section 10.6 km route begins in Tien Son Cave and ends inside the rear opening of Son Doong.
The initial design suggests 30 intermediary support towers will be built to support the cable.
Each tower will occupy around 10 square metres and feature a 360-degree camera that will help alert park staff of forest fires or other threats.
The Son Doong Grotto was discovered in 1991 by Ho Khanh, a local explorer, but only became well-known after a group of scientists from the British Cave Research Association, led by Howard and Deb Limbert, explored it in 2009.
According to the Limberts, the cave is five times larger than Phong Nha cave, previously considered the biggest in Vietnam.
The largest chamber of Son Doong is more than 5 km long, 200 metres high and 150 metres wide. It took over as the world’s largest from Deer Cave in east Malaysia, which is 148 metres high and 142 metres wide at the widest part.
The provincial government plans to officially reopen Son Doong Cave to the public next January after adventure tours to the cave were suspended, 1 September, to allow the cave’s environment to recover.
According to the plan, the cave will be opened for eight tours a month with roughly 10 people per tour allowed to enter the cave. Tour costs are kept high to control the number of visits.
Under the one-year pilot tourism programme, a total of 243 adventure travellers from 34 countries explored the cave on six-day trips that cost USD3,000 per person. Pilot tours run by Oxalis Company between August 2013 and August 2014.

sourced:ttrweekly.com