On my soapbox/icebox

In response to Barnaby Joyce's hopes and dreams for an industrial Antarctica. (Pic thanks to NASA... how ironic)

HIGH in the valleys of the Transantarctic Mountains, laying on rock that is so cold it has frozen solid, is the mummified remains of a seal.
It has lain there for centuries, possibly millennia, on ground that hasn’t seen rain for more than two million years.
Belted almost constantly by powerful katabatic winds, the seal is preserved forever in the most effective, powerful and awesome deep freezer in existence.
It is Antarctica, and there is nowhere else like it on Earth.
When Captain Cook’s botanist Joseph Banks first set foot on what was to become Australian soil in 1770 he was single-handedly able to increase by a third the number of plants known to mankind. Flora on Antarctica is limited to moss, lichen and algae.
It is remarkable even that these two organisms, and in symbiosis, are able to exist in the world’s most inhospitable environment.
What is even more remarkable is the fantastic array of fauna that is able to cling to its fringes, clutching life from a wilderness so harsh that survival is an unrelenting daily battle.
There are 43 species of bird that regularly visit Antarctica, including species of petrel and albatross noted by Cook in his 1773 journal. The birdlife includes the majestic emperor penguin - the only warm-blooded animal to remain on the continent during the harsh months of winter.
Also at the fringes are species of seal and whale.
It may not appear the most biodiverse region in the world, but surely it is the most resilient, interesting and impressive.
It is for this reason that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean must be conserved. Nowhere in the world do the interactions between species - and species and their environment - remain so untouched by human hands. Antarctica is, quite simply, a gift to science.
Though many countries claimed territories on the frozen continent, in 1959 a treaty was signed to set aside the area for peaceful, conservative and scientific purposes. Mankind could do nothing else with such an inhospitable place. Indeed, attempts to conquer it are futile.
Take Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans. Built for the ill-fated 1911 voyage to the pole, it has been preserved in the snow by the same process that froze the seal.
The hut could symbolise many things, but Antarctica has no need of another example of the struggle to survive.
To me it is a symbol that we are not meant to be there. The seal belongs, we do not.
Antarctica is for the scientist, not the developer. And maybe it is for the adventurer, but it is not for the entrepreneur.
On a planet where habitats grow smaller by the day Antarctica should remain an unsoiled jewel in planet Earth’s crown.