LHASA - Tibet may limit the number of tourists and mountaineers to Mount Qomolangma to protect its fragile ecology, the region's top environmental official has said.
The summit of the world's highest mountain Mount Everest, also known as Qomolangma, is covered in cloud. [file]
At present, there are no restrictions on the number of tourists to the mountain or the areas they can visit.
More than 40,000 tourists visited the mountain last year. And even though their number was less than 10 percent of those who visited the mountain on the Nepal side in 2000, environmentalists estimate they could have left behind as much as 120 tons of garbage - an average of 3 kg per tourist.
The glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are shrinking fast because of global warming. Carbon emissions on the mountain can cause further irreparable damage not only to the glaciers, but also the entire ecological balance.
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