OVER 2,360 people have now signed a petition calling for a controversial gondola ride into the heart of the Mournes to be abandoned.
Mountaineering Ireland is backing the petition which was launched recently by the Mourne Gateway Info Group.
Group members are delighted with the public support for the online petition calling for the the centrepiece of the multi-million pound Mournes Gateway project being financed by the Belfast City Region Deal and Newry, Mourne and Down Council to be scrapped.
Previous calls for work on what is one of the biggest tourism schemes ever proposed for the island of Ireland to be shelved have been rejected by the local authority.
However, a fresh bid to stop the proposal — which has been branded by some as a “white elephant and vanity project” — is now being made.
Mountaineering Ireland is strongly opposed to the gondola ride which will operate from a base station in Donard Park to a planned new visitor centre at a disused quarry at Thomas’s mountain.
The organisation is opposing the gondola ride on environmental and mountain safety grounds and has confirmed it has submitted a detailed paper to the local council suggesting ”much better, sustainable, alternative ways to invest in the Mournes, manage the impacts of visitors and bring economic benefits to the community”.
The local authority has promised full public debate on the £44 proposal.
The Mourne Gateway Info Group wants the project to be aborted in favour of what it describes as “more responsible, available alternatives”.
In addition, members are extremely concerned about the “unjustifiable financial risk to ratepayers” and the rising project costs of what is being billed as a “world class tourism attraction”.
Campaigners insist the scheme should be abandoned with the petition demanding the “immediate halt” to the gondola project, labelling it an “ill-conceived venture” which threatens to irreversibly damage a cherished natural landscape, endanger wildlife habitats and impose financial burdens on ratepayers.
Earlier this month, the Mourne Gateway Info Group revealed that research it conducted revealed that the proposed tourist attraction would be grounded ”many times in the year” due to high winds in the Mournes.
The Group say the findings of the study proves excessive wind speeds in the mountains will prevent the ride from operating due to health and safety concerns, casting serious doubts on the project’s financial viability.
The campaign group has obtained detailed information from scientific weather databases and from this produced a graph of win speeds covering a period from September last year to April.
Members say the detailed study reveals that wind gusts at the quarry on Thomas’s Mountain — where a proposed visitors’ centre would be sited — would frequently force the gondola to shut down.
Group spokesman Geoff Ingram said no research had been carried out into weather conditions by Newry, Mourne and Down Council before going forward with the £50m project which is being jointly funded by the local authority and Belfast City Region Deal.
He said wind speeds in the mountains tend to be considerably higher than at ground level, so the campaign group calculated the speeds in the Mournes using a mathematical formula used by mountaineers.
Further information on the petition is available at my.uplift.ie/petitions/no-gondola-in-the-mourne-mountains.