Hi: Found while browsing. Regards Nan 71532.734@compuserve.com ==================================== A Commercial launch pad brings jobs, but at what cost? (adapted from New Scientist June 01, 2000) One of the Caribbean’s last jungles could soon echo to the sound of rocket launches. Guyana, has agreed to sell a large tract of pristine swampy rainforest to a Texan rocket-launch company, Beal Aerospace, for just US$7.50 a hectare. The deal, signed in May 2000, replaces Beal’s original plan to build its US$250 million launch pad on the Caribbean island of Sombrero in Anguilla, which angered environmental scientists (New Scientist, 12 February, p 22). Guyanese Prime Minister Samuel Hinds hailed the project as a "quantum leap for Guyana into the new millennium". On the other hand, critics say that the country will gain little economically, while rainforest dwellers will be thrown out of their homes, swamps drained, forests cut down and ancient archaeological remains trashed. Guyana is close to the equator, which is the best place to launch satellites into geostationary orbit above the equator. The European Space Agency’s spaceport is in nearby French Guiana. From Guyana, the launch route eastwards will be over open ocean in case of mishaps. Prime Minister Hinds calls the site "generally unproductive land never before comercially utilised". Documents supporting the sale agreement however, indicate that up to 54 families living there would have to be removed. Sharon Atkinson of the Amerindian Peoples’ Association in Guyana says many others will lose their right to hunt, fish and gather thatch and timber there. The launch area is part of the homeland of the Warao people, whose settlements date back 7000 years and are only now being excavated. "Building a rocket launch site will very probably destroy the archaeological record here before it has been fully explored", says Terry Roopnarine, a Guyanese anthropologist at the University of Cambridge. The World Monuments Fund in New York recently placed the area on its list of the hundred most endangered archaeological sites. The Vice-President of Beal, David Spoede responds to these concerns by saying that the project will only go ahead if an environmental impact assessment, which is about to start, proves acceptable to both sides. But he adds that drainage work would probably begin in six months, before completion of the assessment. Spoede, in speaking with New Scientist says "many Amerindians have backed the scheme, they want job opportunities for themselves and their children".