Peruvian 'Switzerland' melting under climate change
Pastor Dale Morgan
Peruvian 'Alps' melting under climate change*
by Staff Writers
Lima (AFP) May 14, 2008
Peru's Cordillera Blanca, a snow-topped northern mountain range
sometimes called the "Peruvian Switzerland," is slowly disappearing
because of climate change, a key issue on the table of a Latin
America-EU summit being held in Lima this week.
The glaciers making up the range -- declared a natural world heritage
site by UNESCO -- have steadily been shrinking, said Marco Zapata, the
head of the glaciology unit of Peru's National Institute for Natural
Resources.
He explained that between 1948 and 1976, the Cordillera Blanca has
diminished by nine meters, and between 1977 and now by around 20 meters.
The time left for tourists to see the spectacular zone is limited, and
depends on temperature variations, he said.
Zapata added: "It is known that the shrinking process of the glaciers is
irreversible and nothing can be done."
A 1989 evaluation found that Peru had more than 3,000 glaciers in an
area of 2,041 square kilometers. Just eight years later, the area had
been cut by a quarter, to 1,595 square kilometers.
A clear example of what is happening can be seen on the Pastoruri
mountain, a 5,240-meter-high peak that each year attracts 60,000
tourists. "It is turning into an ice-capped mountain, because the snow
is rapidly shrinking," Zapata said.
In 1995, the perimeter at the snowline was 1.8 square kilometers. By
last year, that had eroded to just 1.1 square kilometers.
Huascaran National Park, where the Cordillera Blanca is situated,
contains 663 glaciers including the 6,768-meter-high Huascaran summit
itself, along with 296 lakes and 41 rivers.
But Jean Ortiz, who heads the running of the park, said global warming
was seriously changing the face of the reserve, where many high-altitude
plants and animals were becoming rarer or had disappeared entirely.
"It's unusual to see with your own eyes deer, mountain cats, Andean
cats, vicunas (a llama-like animal), Andean condors, partridges," he said.