All six Filipino participants in the highest marathon in the world held last Thursday in Nepal triumphantly reached the finish line, with Carina Dayondon coming in first among foreign female climbers.

Calling from the finish line at Namche Bazar in the Khumbu region of Nepal Thursday night, former Transportation and Communications Undersecretary Arturo Valdez shared that Carina Dayondon, one of the three Filipinas who scaled Mount Everest last year, was the first among foreign female participants to reach the finish line, behind seven Nepali women who joined the race.

The prime slot in the men’s division went to a Japanese national.

“We all reached the finish line. And Carina is the first among the foreign females in the finish line behind several female locals,” Valdez told The STAR.

“We’re so happy we all finished the race. We were determined we all would see each other at the finish line,” said Valdez, who was the third oldest participant from a batch of more than 140 racers.

“There’s no injuries among us,” Valdez reported.

Dayondon’s fellow Everest veterans Noelle Wenceslao and Erwin “Pastor” Emata, and other members of the First Philippine Mount Everest Expedition (FPMEE) team, namely Dr. Ted Esguerra and Fred Jamili, composed the six-man team that successfully participated in the 2008 Hillary-Tenzing Mount Everest Marathon, tagged as the highest marathon in the world.

Valdez clarified that the marathon was not a race to the top of Mount Everest but was a 42-kilometer race from the Mount Everest base camp at the Nepal or south side at an altitude of 17,149 feet, to the town of Namche Bazar, which is at an altitude of 11,300,

The marathon route runs over rough and treacherous trails and while the course is basically downhill, it has two steep uphill sections, Valdez said.

The 6th Hillary-Tenzing marathon 2008 was organized to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the climb to the summit of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and his Nepali sherpa, Tenzing Norgay Sherpa.

Dayondon was both jubilant and relieved at her feat.

She shared that she has been regarded as a strong contender, with her good physical condition and track record last year.

“I have been told that I’m being regarded as a threat by the locals to beat their women in the race. They told me I’m being closely watched,” Dayondon said.

But despite her eventual eighth place finish, behind seven Nepali women, Dayondon said she is still very happy since she proved that she can finish the marathon.

”Nothing is impossible. The Filipina can do it,” Dayondon said.

Dayondon said her successful participation in the marathon was a fitting commemoration of the anniversary of her climb to the top of Mount Everest in May last year, along with Wenceslao and Janet Belarmino.

Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Lieutenant Commander Armand Balilo, who learned about Dayondon’s achievement from Valdez, said:  “As far as I know, she completed the marathon in six hours and 45 minutes, beating the fastest record of seven hours and 30 minutes.”

Meantime, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, is arriving in the country tomorrow to be the motivational speaker for employees of Procter & Gamble (P&G) Philippines.

Last year, P&G asked Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comaneci and the Philippines’ very own world-class bowling champ Paeng Nepomuceno to deliver inspirational talks to its employees, P&G Philippine president and general manager James Lafferty said.

Weihenmayer was born with a disease called retinoschisis and became totally blind at the age of 13. Despite the disability, he pursued his passion for the outdoors and on May 25, 2001, he achieved a major feat by conquering Mt. Everest.

The daring quest landed him on the cover of the June 18, 2001 issue of Time magazine.

The following year, at age 33, Weihenmayer completed his seven-year quest to climb the Seven Summits on each of the world’s continents.

Aside from being an adventurer, Weihenmayer is also a much sought-after  public speaker with his innovative ideas and approaches to help people, especially those with disabilities. – With Evelyn Macairan, Rudy Santos (philstar.com)

The ASEAN Center for Biodiversity (ACB) yesterday called for intensified environment conservation in Southeast Asia, as it declared a “red alert” for the region’s rich biodiversity.

This, as the ACB described Southeast Asia’s rich biodiversity as “highly threatened” due to massive forest conversion and wildlife hunting and trade.

According to ACB executive director Rodrigo Fuentes, there will be massive species decline and extinction in Southeast Asia if governments would fail to strengthen further efforts to protect the environment.

He even warned that biodiversity in the region could spell tragedy for the world since Southeast Asia is the richest reservoir of plant and animal life on earth.

The ACB noted that the ASEAN region, while occupying only three percent of the earth’s surface, contains the natural habitats of up to 40 percent of all species on earth.

The region also has one-third or 84,000 square kilometers of all coral reefs.

However, the ACB also said that the region is home to seven of the world’s 25 biodiversity hotspots.

It pointed out that from the 64,800 known species, at least 1,300 are endangered, while 80 percent of its coral reefs are at risk due to destructive fishing practices and coral bleaching.

“Without a concerted effort to protect and conserve biodiversity, Southeast Asia’s 580 million people and the entire human race are in danger,” the ACB said.

Fuentes said loss of biodiversity in Southeast Asia could be primarily blamed on forest conversion in the region.

He said forest conversion is driven by large-scale deforestation for timber by commercial logging activities, shifting cultivation, large-scale mining, and agricultural expansion.

He said these lead to loss of habitat for many birds, mammals and other animals; reduced pollinator activity; decline in species richness and populations and overall reduction in biodiversity.

In Sumatra, for instance, there has been a decline from 80 to 33 percent, from 1980-2001, in forest cover within 50-kilometer periphery, the ACB said.

Meanwhile, the ACB said incidents of forest fires in the region in 1997-1998, 2002 and 2006, resulted in the population decline, and high infant and juvenile mortality in many animals, as well as reduced seedling and sapling population for many tree species.

“Biodiversity loss could trigger enormous effects on food security, health, shelter, medicine, and aesthetic and other life sustaining resources,” Fuentes also said.

Aside from forest conversion, the ACB said wildlife hunting and trade for food, pet, and medicinal purposes also contribute to biodiversity loss in the ASEAN region.

Overall, it said, wildlife was extracted from forests at more than six times the sustainable rate.

Moreover, the ACB said that increasing human population and poverty, climate change, and lack of financial resources likewise contributes to biodiversity loss.

On the other hand, the ACB said climate change could have the largest proportional effect on biodiversity in extreme environments (e.g., Arctic, boreal zones).

ACB data showed that in Sarawak, 2.6 million animals were hunted each year for bush meat while in Sabah, 108 million animals suffered the same fate.  

The data further indicated that in 2000, Indonesia contributed about 29 percent of global exports for snake and lizard skins while Singapore imported 7,093 live animals and had a total net export of 301,905 animal skins in the same year.

From 1975 to 1992, Korea imported 6,128 kilograms of tiger bones, 60 percent of which were from Indonesia while in China, tigers, rhinos, turtles, snakes and monkeys continue to be major sources of traditional Chinese medicine, the ACB data added.

On the occasion of Earth Day tomorrow, the ACB appealed to international and regional organizations, governments, private corporations and foundations, communities and individuals to support its programs.

The ACB, with funding support from the European Union, is an intergovernmental regional center that facilitates cooperation and coordination among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the conservation and sustainable use of the region’s already dwindling biodiversity resources.

So far, among the efforts taken by ASEAN member countries in order to foster and ensure conservation of the region’s biodiversity include its ratification of a number of international agreements with biodiversity concerns.

Polluted, crossed by busy shipping lanes, and disputed by many countries, the South China Sea has taken an environmental battering that threatens future food supplies, marine scientists have warned.

In a decade the sea – at the heart of a densely populated and rapidly industrializing region – has lost 16 percent of its coral reefs and coastal mangroves and 30 percent of its sea grass, says the United Nations.

The exploitation of its fisheries, both legal and illegal, by family boats and industrial deep sea trawlers now threatens to deplete fish stocks that millions of people rely on, a Hanoi conference heard last week.

“The key issues on a basin scale are habitat degradation and loss, overfishing and land-based pollution,” said Vo Si Tuan, who served as Vietnam representative to the UN Environment Program (UNEP) South China Sea Project.

“There are many, many problems, but these are the biggest.”

The South China Sea is ringed by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, with about 350 million people living along its coastal areas.

“There are large populations heavily dependent, directly and indirectly, on fishing, in one of the world’s most biodiverse marine areas,” said Keith Symington, a marine specialist with the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The international trends are more pronounced in the South China Sea.

“Boats have to go further and fish longer to catch the same amount of fish and they are catching smaller fish,” said Symington, speaking to AFP at the fourth Global Conference on Oceans, Coasts and Islands.

“There are a lot of illegal or unreported catches, there are fishing boats flying flags of convenience, there are loopholes.”

The UN has highlighted the damage done to coral reefs, seagrass, mangroves and wetlands that are crucial for biodiversity and fish breeding.

Vietnam’s Halong Bay, a world heritage-listed island scape, is a case in point, said Michael Hayes, an expert on tourism in protected marine areas.

“There are 138 coral species in Halong Bay, but most of the reefs are being destroyed by heavy sedimentation,” he said.

Erosion from deforestation along the Red River is pouring silt into the bay, where shrimp farms and land reclamation have destroyed mangroves and heavy shipping, coal mining and tourism are polluting the waters.

“There is more and more pressure on the South China Sea, from fisheries but also from other exploitation like oil and gas and ballast waters from ships that introduce invasive species,” he said.

Vietnam, aiming to protect its coastal areas, plans to send fewer and larger fishing boats deeper into the South China Sea, said Nguyen Chu Hoi, director of the Vietnam Institute of Fisheries Economics and Planning.

The communist government plans to declare 15 marine protected areas this year, he said, and to reduce its fleet of 90,000 mostly family-run boats by 30 percent over five years while encouraging more off-shore fishing.

The ships may be heading into troubled waters, and not just during the annual typhoon season that is set to worsen with climate change.

Fishing has already led to clashes on the high seas, with Chinese vessels and the Indonesian coastguard firing at Vietnamese ships.

Managing the South China Sea is complicated by the fact that at its heart lies the Spratly islands, which are claimed in full or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

“The South China Sea is a highly contested area,” said Robert Jara of the Philippines’ environment and natural resources department.

“One of the basic approaches now is putting aside the claims while we address the environment and the resource degradation of the South China Sea.

“If you address the claims before addressing the environment, at the end of the day everybody loses out.”

Scientists have predicted that climate change in coming decades will cause more flooding in the Northern Hemisphere and droughts in some southern and arid zones.

In addition, they said that some areas around the Mediterranean, parts of southern Africa, northeastern Brazil and the western U.S. region will likely suffer water shortages.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chief U.N. climate scientist, said at the end of a meeting in Budapest that the rising frequency and intensity of floods and droughts could lead to a food crisis.

“We may see a decline in agriculture production,” said Pachauri, who is also chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

An IPCC report presented at the meeting said the decline of water quantity and quality would lead to shortages of water for drinking and agriculture.

Millions of Africans could be afflicted by such water problems by 2020, unless action is taken to mitigate climate change, experts said.

While the proportion of heavy rainfalls will very likely increase, so will the areas simultaneously affected by extreme droughts.

One of the co-authors of the IPCC report said water issues would be one of the main problems of climate change.

“Everybody pretty much agrees that water is central to the way climate change is going to affect ecosystems and every human being,” said Kathleen Miller, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Miller mentioned deltas of major rivers in Asia, such as the Mekong, as one of the areas where floods were an increasing concern.

“Those places will be much more vulnerable,” Miller said.

She said that in the U.S. “there’s a high likelihood of the west getting drier.” – AP