Ibex Earth have started a new not for profit initiative - The Lost World Project. The initiative looks to safeguard the long-term future of Mount Roraima - the plateau that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write his famous novel 'The Lost World' and more recently has been at the centre of Disney's recent blockbuster 'UP'.

Mount Roraima; The ‘Lost World’...

Mount Roraima is South America's lost world - a colossal sandstone plateau that towers above the surrounding rainforests and into the sky, encircled on all sides by sheer cliffs up to 600 m tall. Locally known as a Tepui (also spelt Tepuy), Roraima was formed 70 million years ago, and its inaccessible summit has remained isolated ever since. The top of Roraima can only be reached by a narrow ledge that runs up the immense cliffsides. This dramatic pathway through the clouds is steep and slippery, falling away for hundreds of metres on one side. The top of the ledge leads to the summit – an ancient, isolated landscape dominated by labyrinths of twisted, towering rock pinnacles, drifts of sparkling quartz crystals, and the tallest waterfalls on the planet.

Ancient wetas, giant ants, Gondwanic toads, scorpions, giant millipedes, oil-birds, coatis, iridescent plants, primitive ferns and carnivorous plants abound on the remote summit. All of the plant and animal life of Roraima has been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years, and many species found here today occur nowhere else on Earth. A few are truly ancient living fossils, forgotten in time.

For two hundred years explorers reached the base of the plateau but all failed to reach the summit, prevented by the towering vertical cliffs. Efforts to conquer Roraima captivated the Victorian world, and inspired Darwinian speculation as to what the remote plateau top may harbour. Scientists of the day seriously theorised Roraima might hold prehistoric life, dinosaurs or even undiscovered human civilisations. Yet all efforts to reach the remote mountain top failed. Ideas of transporting a hot air balloon to float to the mountain top came to nothing, as did the idea of building an immense 800 metre tall scaffold up the towering cliffsides. And so the summit of Roraima remained unvisited and unexplored.

But just when all hope had been abandoned, and Roraima seemed a land forever beyond the reach of mankind, a ledge was sighted up the towering cliffsides. 125 years ago, two intrepid explorers from the Royal Geographical Society succeeded in reaching the ledge, and after a suspense-rich struggle, they climbed to the top, to discover a land never before seen by mankind.

On reaching the summit of Roraima, the first explorers described the landscape as “some strange country of nightmares”. They found a land dominated by labyrinths of twisted stone pinnacles, valleys carpeted with sparkling quartz crystals, and the tallest waterfalls on the planet. Even though they did not discover dinosaurs or prehistoric life, they did find the greatest concentration of new plant and animal life ever found. The ascent also helped prove Charles Darwin's theories, it also defined national borders, and inspired one of the most popular adventure novels ever written (Arthur Conan Doyles' The Lost World).

Today the 100 or so plateaus that are scattered across the north of South America remain some of the least explored places of the world. In recent years, the longest quartzite cave systems known have been found below the surface of Roraima and other tablelands nearby. These underground worlds harbour their own endemic life. The longest and most extensive of all found so far is the Caves of Crystal Eyes of Mount Roraima, a vast dark maze of tunnels, passageways and caverns over 5.6 km in length. The cave network’s alluring name refers to holes cut directly in the walls and floor of the cave passageways by swirling eddies of water. Most of the hollow ‘eyes’ have accumulated shiny crystals of quartz that are continually washed into the cave system from the plateau surface above and so conspicuously gleam in torch light. Only a fraction of the total area of Mount Roraima’s surface has been searched for cave systems and the diversity of tepui cave life is only beginning to be understood by ecologists and conservationists. The difficulty and expense of cave exploration on the summits of the tepuis has meant that almost all of the networks currently known have not been explored fully as most teams have been forced to return without reaching the ends of the various cave systems that have been found. Perhaps more so than any other part of the world, the dark underground world of Guiana remains to be discovered.

But as accessibility to Roraima increases, and growing numbers of tourists visit, the plateau faces an increasing uncertain future. The highly specialised life that has evolved atop of Roraima over millions of years is increasingly threatened by introduced foreign plants and animals, as well as physical damage tourist traffic. European weeds carried on the shoes and cloths of tourists are already common in many areas of the mountain top, displacing the endemic native species. Illegal gold mining, wild fires and the collection of quartz crystals have also severely impacted different parts of the mountain top and slopes.

At the start of the 21^st century, we are still only beginning to understand the diversity of life and landscapes which the ancient summit of Roraima harbours. Ibex Earth has put together a critically acclaimed documentary team, including a BBC Planet Earth cameraman, to complete the film that will be premiered at the Royal Geographical Society in December 2010. However, it is a documentary with a difference - Ibex Earth is looking to send ten young adults to join the film crew and take part in the expedition and we have recently completed a UK wide university tour where we have spoken to no less than 1,500 students about the project.

The aim of the student involvement is to help raise funds for an international effort to secure Mount Roraima UNESCO protection and fund environmental projects for Ibex Earth's Environmental & Conservation Partners - http://www.ibexearth.com/partners/our-environmental-a-conservative-partners.html - for example helping to fund an orphanage in Zimbabwe (Ndoro Children's Charities), purchasing 100,000 acres of rainforest through the Our World: Our Choice campaign (Ibex Earth / World Land Trust) and helping to build a sustainable center for school children in the UK (Young People's Trust for the Environment).

If you visit www.thelostworldproject.org you will be able to watch a short two minute clip about the project.

Christopher Livemore

Director
Ibex Earth

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www.thelostworldproject.org