World Park Base was a non-governmental year-round Antarctic base located at Cape Evans on Ross Island in the Ross Dependency. The international environmental organization Greenpeace established World Park Base in 1987 in order to press its demand for the Antarctic Treaty nations to declare all of the continent of Antarctica a World Park. This would make the entire continent off-limits to commercial exploitation and pollution, and permit only limited scientific research. Greenpeace closed down and completely dismantled the base in 1992.
The official attitude amongst the Antarctic Treaty nations was that World Park Base was to be ignored and that no assistance be given to it, although New Zealand, which claims jurisdiction over Ross Dependency (though all territorial claims are in abeyance under the Antarctic Treaty), would have assisted if a life-threatening situation arose.
Famous quotes containing the words world, park and/or base:
“Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even if it’s just a cold one.
Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can’t lick the Vandamms of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them, and fly away with them, and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.
Professor: I’m afraid we’re already doing that.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
All in our gowns of green so gay
Into the Park a-maying!”
—Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)
“What I often forget about students, especially undergraduates, is that surface appearances are misleading. Most of them are at base as conventional as Presbyterian deacons.”
—Muriel Beadle (b. 1915)