Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 10/02/2007 By Danielle Demetriou
A controversial new bridge close to Peru's most famous sight, Machu Picchu, could have a damaging impact on tourism to the ruins, critics have said.
The 80-metre (262ft) bridge, due to open later this month, will create a new route to the Inca ruins and enable locals to take produce to Cusco in three hours instead of 12.
However, politicians and environmentalists fear that the bridge, due to open this month, will bring a surge in tourist numbers, which could damage the ruins and lead to an increase in drug trafficking in the region.
British tour operators seem to be in two minds on the plan. A spokeswoman for Journey Latin America said: "Our feelings about the bridge are mixed. We are excited about the potential for development of the village and the surrounding area, which is so much less known and wealthy than Cusco and the Sacred Valley. But we feel it is essential that visitor numbers are closely monitored and regulated." It is not the first time concerns have been raised about the future of Machu Picchu. Named a Unesco World Heritage Site, it currently attracts as many as 2,500 visitors a day. Unesco inspectors are due to inspect the site later this year to ascertain whether its status is endangered.
Last year, the Peruvian government announced that it had restricted the numbers permitted to walk the Inca Trail at any one time. Five months ago, the site was declared a no-fly zone by the government because of fears that low-flying helicopter tours for tourists were damaging the habitat.
Science Daily
BUFFALO, N.Y.
Although the ancient Inca are renowned for their highly organized society and extraordinary skill in working with gold, stone and pottery, few are familiar with the khipu -- an elaborate system of colored, knotted strings that many researchers believe to be primarily mnemonic in nature, like a rosary -- that was used by the ancient conquerors to record census, tribute, genealogies and calendrical information. Because the Inca didn't employ a recognizable system of writing, researchers like Galen Brokaw, assistant professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, have focused on the khipu as a way to further illuminate Inca history and culture. Brokaw doesn't adhere to the strict view held by some researchers that the khipu is solely mnemonic in nature, instead maintaining the possibility that these intricate specimens are historiographic in nature.
Deciphering the mysteries of the khipu, which consists of a primary cord from which hang pendants of cords, depends upon researchers discovering a Rosetta Stone of sorts that would allow them to decode the meaning of the cords and knots.
Cord color and the direction of twist and ply of yarn appear to denote specific meanings, but whether or not the devices recorded more than statistical or mathematical information, such as poetry or language, remains elusive to researchers, says Brokaw. He does believe, however, that some of the specimens -- about 600 khipu survive in museums or private collections -- do appear to be non-numerical.
The khipu didn't originate with the Inca, explains Brokaw. Even today, he adds, Andean shepherds can be seen using a form of khipu to record information about their flocks.
"There's a certain kind of mystery about it that's intriguing," Brokaw says, noting that while there is a tendency among some researchers to overly romanticize the khipu as some kind of writing system, he believes -- after reading the indigenous texts comprised, in part, of biographies of Inca kings -- that it's easy to see how the khipu might have represented more complex, discursive structures than being simply records of tribute.
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Published On Line - Physorg
Source: Field Museum
A strikingly unusual animal was recently discovered in the cloud-forests of Peru. The large rodent is about the size of a squirrel and looks a bit like one, except its closest relatives are spiny rats.
The nocturnal, climbing rodent is beautiful yet strange looking, with long dense fur, a broad blocky head, and thickly furred tail. A blackish crest of fur on the crown, nape and shoulders add to its distinctive appearance.
Isothrix barbarabrownae, as the new species has been named, is described in the current issue of Mastozoología Neotropical (Neotropical mammalogy), the principal mammalogy journal of South America. A color illustration of the bushy rodent graces the cover of the journal.
The authors of the study found the rodent in 1999 while conducting field research in Peru's Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve Mountains in Southern Peru along the eastern slope of the Andes. Extending from lowland tropical forests in the Amazon Basin to open grasslands above the Andean tree line, Manu is home to more species of mammals and birds than any equivalently sized area in the world.
"Like other tropical mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas, Ruwenzoris, Virungas and Kinabalu, the Andes support a fantastic variety of habitats," said Bruce Patterson, MacArthur Curator of Mammals at The Field Museum. "These in turn support some of the richest faunas on the planet."
The nocturnal, climbing rodent is beautiful yet strange looking, with long dense fur, a broad blocky head, and thickly furred tail. A blackish crest of fur on the crown, nape and shoulders add to its distinctive appearance.
Isothrix barbarabrownae, as the new species has been named, is described in the current issue of Mastozoología Neotropical (Neotropical mammalogy), the principal mammalogy journal of South America. A color illustration of the bushy rodent graces the cover of the journal.
The authors of the study found the rodent in 1999 while conducting field research in Peru's Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve Mountains in Southern Peru along the eastern slope of the Andes. Extending from lowland tropical forests in the Amazon Basin to open grasslands above the Andean tree line, Manu is home to more species of mammals and birds than any equivalently sized area in the world.
"Like other tropical mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas, Ruwenzoris, Virungas and Kinabalu, the Andes support a fantastic variety of habitats," said Bruce Patterson, MacArthur Curator of Mammals at The Field Museum. "These in turn support some of the richest faunas on the planet."
"The new species is not only a handsome novelty," Patterson said. "Preliminary DNA analyses suggest that its nearest relatives, all restricted to the lowlands, may have arisen from Andean ancestors. The newly discovered species casts a striking new light on the evolution of an entire group of arboreal rodents."
Reitz graduate finds adventure of lifetime doing research in AndesPublished On Line - CourierPress
Photography by JILL JANKOWSKI
Story by SHARON SORENSON
Sunday, January 28, 2007 
Imagine nearly five months in the jungle. No television, cell phone, newspaper, e-mail, electricity or running water. With a few dedicated assistants, Jill Jankowski lives in a tent; eats rice, pasta and dried soup; treats brown river water for drinking; and stays alert for poisonous snakes, disease-transmitting mosquitoes and stinging ants. Even after a bout with a serious parasitic infection, she's going back.
Jankowski, a 1998 Reitz graduate and a graduate of Purdue University, abandoned her 4.0 grade-point average earned studying chemical engineering, as well as a starting position on Purdue's soccer team. She chose instead to study birds.
Now earning a doctorate from the University of Florida, she's studying the diversity of birds in Peru's 3.75 million-acre Manu reserve.
Supported by her research team, she trudges from the Amazon foothills (elevation 2,550 feet) to the Andes Mountains tree line (elevation: 11,000 feet) to learn why, in a day's stroll up or down the slope, one can cross the ranges of hundreds of bird species.
"You can find as many bird species on this single Andean slope as in the U.S. and Canada combined - about 1,150 species," Jankowski said.
Tropical forests, Jankowski said, are "spectacular places that we know next to nothing about."
"They have the most amazing and quirky animals on the planet. But in many cases, tropical forests are destroyed before anyone can document the life within."
Jankowski feels an urgency about her work, in part, she said, because "in later years, this project will gauge effects of climate change."
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