McCRAICKEN: hello and welcome to the things that have been making the news.

But first the the headlines with Robbie Bonnet.

BONNET: Touring cyclist Sean Kane has narrowly escaped a severe fall, when his front rack broke and went into his front-wheel. Early reports say he remained upright with minimal damage done to the bike.

It was a weary Sean that spoke to reporters Sunday evening after rolling into mountain-trekking centre El Chalten.

REPORTER: What happened on the road this afternoon?

KANE: Em, what happened? It happened so quickly. I was trying to catch the other cyclists that I had been cycling with this last few days, when going down a hill I hit a bump and there was a sudden sharp panging noise. I realised my front-rack had broke and had gone into the spokes.

REPORTER: And you and bike are fine?

KANE: Yes, the broken rack loosened and bent one spoke, knocking the wheel a bit out of true. I tightened up the spoke with a spoke-key, bringing the wheel back into true. Did a borch repair on the rack so I could continue. And as you see I'm fine. But excuse me as I've been cycling twelve days now, from Coyhaique. I'm off to find a campsite.

BONNET: Sean speaking in El Chalten. And now back to JP.

McCRAICKEN: Thanks Rob. Well I've Sean here in the Studio. Also Barry, who's sporting a suntan. Southern Chile has been experiencing a heatwave, hasn't it?

BEST: Yes, indeed, it's been unseasonally warm for the time of year.

McCRAICKEN: Is there any pacific reason for this other than Globel Warming?

BEST: It's the effect of El Nino, or a hairdryer effect. Warm air blowing in off the Pacific that has brought dramtic changes in Southern Chile these last few years. The mountains only a few decades back were white with snow throughout the Summer months. Now as early as November, the snow is almost gone off the mountains. This in turn has had a big effect on rivers, with the level of some major rivers in the region, very low by January in recent years, resulting in less fish, and as sport-fishing in the area is big business, this has had a knock on effect on tourism.

McCRAICKEN: What's the cause? Barry. Is it just that we are all consuming far too must of the planets resoarces? We want to travel. We want all the latest electronic gagets. All of which must have some effect on our enviroment.

BEST: Absolutely.

But the distruction of the enviroment has been going on since the industrial revolution, which come about as late as the nineteen-fifties in remote areas of Chilean Patagonia, when the primevil forests of the Andean Cordillero were burned to make way for agricultural settlements, followed by the military's road-building of the seventies and eighties: the road called the Carretera Austral to united these new settler communites, that previously had to cross into Argentina to reach the outside world.

I listened to the BBC "One Planet" program last week, in which a Professor Knoaks, a specialise in Patagonian studies at UCL was interesting to listen to. I've brought in a podcast of the program, and we'll have a listen.

KNOAKS: Patagonia. The final great wilderness frontier to have fallen to white European colonisation. For thousands of years it had been inhabited by nomadic tribesmen called the Tehuelche, who lived in harmony with their inviroment, migrating seasonally from the eastern coastal plains west to the Andean Cordillero. And often doing multi-year journeys from the straits of Magellan, north to hold council with other tribesmen, the Northern Tehuelche and Mupuche, as documented in English seaman George Musters' book "At Home With The Patagonians".

Musters lived and travelled with the Tehuelches from the Santa Cruz river, north to the white settlement on the Rio Negro in the years 1869 70, a distance of many thousand kilometres on horseback, having to subsist on hunting for gaunacho, osrich, armadilla and occationally a puma. They'd often go days without killing anything and would starve. They'd all the time endure harsh weather, strong wind and freezing rain while crossing bleak featureless pampas. Musters was glad when they reached the tranquil Andean Cordillero, with it's forested mountain valleys.

Argentina at the time had little to no presents in what it claimed to the south of the Rio Negro, the northern limit of Patagonia, due to harshness of the enviroment. They only had a few coastal outposts. Chile too had only a penal colony in the far south, Punta Arenas and a few settlements in Northern Patagonia. However both bartered with the indigenes Patagonians for goods, following a tradition started by the Spanish Conquest of America in the sixteenth century, when not long after, other nation's ships other than Spanish would pull into sheltered bays along the Patagonian coast, such as the English, French and Dutch. In this Musters was witnessing the ultimate demise of the native Patagonians. Through trade in the white outposts they'd become adicted to tobacco, sugar, yerba mate and worse of all strong ligor with resulting alcoholism. But the biggest killer was the whiteman's diseases, which had near enough halved the population since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Musters saw the agravation and talk of war among the Mupuche and Pampa Indians, because new white settlements were increasingly encrouching on their trible lands; which, a few years after Musters' travels led to Argentina going to war, in what was called "The Campagn of the Desert" or indian war that effectively wiped out the native people of Patagonia.

With the native people gone from Patagonia, the way was opened up for land hungry immigrants prepared to face rough climatic conditions to establish sheep farms, or estancias. At the time (1890 onwards) demand for wool in Europe led to a wool boom. Sheep farming was akin to drilling for oil. This all started to colapse at the end of World War 1. And by the thirties sheep was becoming even less profitable due to World recession and would be further hit in the decades ahead by the invention of manmade fibres, leading to less need for wool in clothing. In turn there was less need for the farm workers on the sheep estancias on the Argentine side of Patagonia, most of which were Chilean migrants.

The border between Chile and Argentina in Patagonia was formed in the years 1902 to 1928. At the time a few German, English, Belgium and French immigrants had made paths from the pampas into the forested valleys of the Andes to settle on the Chilean side of the new frontier. However much of these areas of Southern Chile would remain nearly uninhabited until in the late forties, fifties and sixties, when successive Chilean governments implimented a slash and burn policy. offering free land in these remote areas in the south to workless former Argentine estancia workers, most of Chilean origin. All that had to be done was clear the forest. The result was approximatly 4 million hectares of native forest went up in smoke and turned into cattle and sheep pasture.

In 1973 Chile fell to a military dictatorship and a few years later Argentina followed suit. While the only terrestrial route for many of the inhabitants of the recently created communities in Southern Chile remained through the mountains out onto the pampas of Argentina, as the border between the two nations in the south were still remote and scetchy, a situation that would ultimatedly lead to conflict. So the Chilean army work corp went to work on constructing a road to connect all these areas in the south to the rest of Chile, and created a strong Chilean military presents in the area to discourage any suspected Argentine territorial expansion.

The road took 22 years to realise and cost a fortune. But the biggest cost was inviromental damage done by excavating, bridging of rivers and further degradation of the forest.

THE PODCAST ENDS.

McCRAICKEN: Fasinating stuff. Sean, cycling the Carretera Austral, do you see the damage to the enviroment?

KANE: Em, I'm glad of the road as I'm sure the tens of thousands of others that visit the area annually are, as it's an incredible wilderness to see. I suppose we all get used to seeing roads and other things we take for granted. The things that make modern life comfortable. But I've read the book "At Home With The Patagonians" that ilustrates how tough travel and life was in Musters' time, but he would've seen a completely untouched, unspoiled by human activity, pure and pristine forest and mountains heavily blanketed with snow in what now is Southern Chile.

McCRAICKEN: Okay. You tell me you really enjoyed riding the Carretera Aurtral this time, when you didn't much enjoy riding it in 2005.

KANE: In 2005 I was riding south to north, while this time I's riding north to south. I think the scenery is more impressive when looking south. Also, southbound is all the time riding away from civilisation to more remote areas, the sense of adventure increases the further south; whereas going north, is going back to civilisation.

McCRAICKEN: And you've had a road to Damaskus insight on the way.

KANE: Yes. I realised I enjoyed it so much that I'd like to do more offroad touring in the near future. Starting with countries near home such as Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

McCRAICKEN: Well I'm getting my bike out this week for some offroad touring. I'm keen to try out my new bikepacking setup. And with that there's just time left to read out this text message, "hope Sean is well after his near disaster" signed Richard B. Our old friend I think. I detect sarcasm.

Bye for now.