By Shiela Mae Roldan
January 30, 2012, 7:16 am
In every global competition, we always have a player – the perfect example of our being laging handa. We often get to the top; just like a boy scout, we get badges for every time we achieve something. Our badges have come in the form of Manny Pacquiao, Shamcey Supsup, Charice Pempengco and the like. Now, we behold our latest badge–the Puerto Princesa Underground River (PPUR).
Our very own PPUR is now one of the chosen provisional New 7 Wonders of Nature as announced by The New7Wonders Foundation (N7M). People all over the world voted their seven choices either through the N7W website, international telephone voting lines, or licensed telephone and SMS voting systems.
The PPUR reached the top 7 from the original 441 possible wonders on 11:11 am on November 11, 2011 when the online voting ended. Along with the PPUR, the other 6 winners were: Amazon River, South America; Halong Bay, Vietnam; Iguazu Falls, Brazil; Jeju Island, South Korea; the Komodo National Park, Indonesia and Table Mountain, South Africa.
PPUR symbolizes a significant habitat for biodiversity conservation, containing a full mountain to the sea ecosystem and forests, which are among the most significant in Asia. One of the highlights of the area is Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, known for its spectacular limestone or karst landscape that contains an 8.2 km long underground river.
“The PPUR represents one of the largest and most important underground estuaries in the world, hosts one of the most complex cave systems, and has the natural capacity to offset the effects of high-impact tourism,” says Ramon Paje, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources of the Philippines.
Not only does the PPUR have the innate beauty that can captivate the eyes of the tourists, it has recently been discovered that the PPUR hosts extremely rare minerals.
“Cave experts themselves are amazed because only few caves in the world host more than three to four minerals, yet in the PPUR alone, they have unearthed at least 11, of which three are new cave minerals,” says Paje.
The rarest mineral located in PPUR is called serrabrancaite, as confirmed by the Italian La Venta Geographical Association, which has been conducting expeditions at the PPUR. Serrabrancaite was never found in caves before. In fact, it was only found once, in the pegmatites of Sierra Branca, Brazil, but its genesis is different from that of PPUR’s. This new cave mineral was extracted from an inlet of the cave whose formation is mostly caused by mineralization of guano, droppings of bats and seabirds.
With the presence of rare minerals and the river’s extraordinary landscape, it is only right for PPUR to belong to the top 7. This winning is expected to have a great impact to the country’s tourism. Last year, around 425,000 tourists visited the underground river. The government expects tourist visits to increase by 30 percent this year which lead to the preparation of tripling flights to Puerto Princesa and using bigger planes for accommodation. For sure, the country is greatly thrilled by the PPUR’s new-found international fame.
Although the votes have already closed, N7M still has to verify the preliminary calculation of votes before the confirmation of each finalist on 2012 which is why the New 7 Wonders of Nature is presently termed “provisional”.
“If we want to save anything, we truly need to appreciate it first,” says Bernard Weber, founder of N7M. The foundation aims to provide economic benefit to its participants, connecting the world through online means and especially to promote global memory. The success of the New 7 Wonders of Nature Campaign will hopefully help protect and recognize the world’s man-made and natural heritage, thus foster respect for our planet’s diversity. Now, N7M is currently working on its next campaign, New7Wonders Cities.
The Puerto Princesa Underground River is indeed another badge to the Philippine’s boy-scout sash. But we should not stop here; just because we got the PPUR to the world’s top 7, it doesn’t mean that we should stop caring and being proud of the rest of our beautiful landmarks. C
