A commentary: NO to Mt. Apo stairway!

Recently, the mountaineering community was shaken by the Kidapawan City's proposal to build stairway to the country's very own Mt. Apo. The proposal will constitute a 7km stairway with 16,620 steps that will cost atleast 2.5 million pesos. The intention was to promote tourism by giving an ease in climbing the Philippines' highest mountain via building concrete stairways, hanging bridge across the Marble River, and "state-of-the-art public restroom" along the mentioned river and Lake Venado.

People will see me biased on this issue as I belong to the mountaineering community, but still I insist to the public my strong stand point in condemning this proposal. I may not be knowledgeable enough by law as I am a BS-Accountancy graduate, but no higher education needed to understand such.

There are lots of commentaries and statements that I read in the net stating their support with the project, but let me comment for some:
1. There are comments that they don't disagree with the project since the Floras and Faunas in the Mt. Apo are already been disturbed and if the community is insisting this as the main defense, the community should think twice as we at the first hand created the mountain's wound. This supports the statement of the proponents as "Also, by building structures along the pathway leading to the peak, it would discourage tourists and local to create a new trail and other mode of activities that will further destroy the natural park. At least 64,053 hectares of the mountain is considered part of the Mount Apo Natural Park".

-  Well, we must admit that the community maybe guilty of this, but the as we all know, there are principles and ethics that mountaineers follows to lessen the impact. And, letting a further destruction is not a wise decision, it's just like legalizing a rape towards a prostitute.  Also, as I look into the explanation that further destruction of the Natural park will decrease once the project was up and running, I find it paradox as the tourism encourages people to come, and we all know that number of visitors is parallel to the number of garbage and  environmental impact despite how much effort done to maintain the cleanliness. Even the country's top Malls can be an example for this, you can never find a perfect clean public CR from the malls as compared to high ranking hotels that not everybody can afford to go.

2. Also, some insists that tourism will give the local residences of Kidapawan City an opportunity for more income.

-With the budget 2.5 million pesos, many useful projects can be done, from commercialism that opens lots of job opportunity up to education that broadens their knowledge that again opens up for more job opportunity.

3. Some saying that we should take a look at the Japan's Mt. Fuji before complaining to the project. They say that Mt. Fuji project was successful and does not impacted much in the mountain.

-All I can say is that we all know how much disciplined the Japanese are, bring the discipline in every Filipino and future foreign visitors of the project and it will be a different case.

Again, I strongly oppose the proposal. NO to Mt. Apo stairway.

Pls see other blogs for more commentary:

*Philippine Mountaineering
*Pinoy Mountaineer