This hot summer day - August 20 – has an icy tinge….at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences National Museum of Natural History. There, the Association of Young Polar Explorers is organizing an Antarctic Day, one of the events marking the museum’s 125^th anniversary. The day’s programme includes interesting lectures: about animal life in the Antarctic, about the icy ecosystems, about the similarities and differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic about the Bulgarian studies of the ice continent. Children will be able to visit a creative studio, where a contest for pictures of the indigenous population of the Antarctic like penguins, seals and whales, as well as entertaining quizzes will be organized. A scientific casino – Crystal – opens doors at 4 PM, an initiative taking place as part of the UNESCO Year of Crystallography. But this is a casino where the stakes are not money, but knowledge. At 8 PM tonight, Boyan Petrov, who has conquered three 8,000 meter peaks will tell the story of his recent climb of the formidable K2.

This country has a serious contribution to the exploration of the ice continent - Bulgarian scientists have been working there for over 25 years. The first houses at the Bulgarian base were built in 1988. Since 1993, there has been a Bulgarian expedition to the Antarctic every year. “This is a matter of national policy – foreign as well as scientific. Bulgarian experts are very much appreciated within the world Antarctic community,” says in an interview for Radio Bulgaria Prof. Hristo Pimpirev, Director of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute and leader of the Bulgarian expeditions to the Antarctic. “Bulgarian Antarctic experts take part in many international projects. Our St. Kilment Ohrdiski base on the island of Livingstone is a research centre where we work on a number of projects connected with climate change,” says Prof. Pimpirev and adds:

“We can all feel the change, here in Bulgaria  – with the warm winter, the rainy summer, the natural calamities, and we all suffer the consequences. We, human beings are affecting nature with our high-tech society, environmental pollution, with our thermo electric power plants, our internal combustion engines and the felling of the rain forest. And this is substantiated by numerous facts – the rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the rise in the sea level. And it is nature’s way to react with climate phenomena like this. The Antarctic is the litmus test for the climate of the Earth. The international teams, comprising scientists from USA, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, South Korea, from all over the world have been researching how the climate is changing in the Antarctic, how the glaciers are melting, how they are receding, something that is plain to see from our Bulgarian polar base. This is a process that is affecting the entire climate system of the world, as our planet is a system that regulates itself and nothing can exist in isolation.”

Of course, scientists have been raising the alarm of coming changes and looming dangers. However, in the fight to preserve nature it is vital to involve industrialists and politicians. To do away with productions that pollutes the environment and affect the atmosphere and the sea water. “If we keep our eyes on the profits and nothing else, that would be fatal for mankind,” Hristo Pimpirev says.

English: Milena Daynova