A video produced by Red Bull is raising eyebrows among conservationists.
In another bid to use extreme sports to promote the energy drink, Red Bull had professional wakeskaters Brian Grubb and Dominik Preisner skim their way across the ancient Banaue rice terraces in the Philippines.
High in the Philippines Cordilleras, north of Manila, the 2,000-year-old climbing maze of rice fields has served as a source of sustenance for the Ifugao indigenous people and a point of pride for Filipinos — who claim the terraces as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”
The terraces have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1995 and were for several years listed as a World Heritage Site in Danger because of “uncontrolled tourism and the introduction of open-market economy threatened both the natural heritage of the province and the traditional practices of its inhabitants.”
So, promoting the spot as a destination for thrill-seekers doesn’t sit well with everyone.
Wakeskating — think waterskiing meets skateboarding — employs a boat, jet ski or cable system to tow the wakeskater on a wood or fiberglass board. But unlike waterskiing or wakeboarding, the skater’s feet are not strapped to the board.
In the video posted on YouTube late last week, Grubb and Preisner zip across the narrow pools of water of a perilously perched rice paddy.
WATCH: Brian Grubb and Dominik Preisner’s Banaue rice terrace wakeskate video
Grubb and Red Bull say they got permission from local people, but heritage experts aren’t impressed.
“Wakeboarding at the terraces? It is a stunt totally inappropriate to the site. And stunt it is,” Augusto Villalon, president of the Heritage Society, told Agence France-Press (AFP).
“If the intent is to attract tourists and assist in improving the economic conditions of the people, it remains as an activity that is grossly out of place and if encouraged and continued will significantly remove from it the values by which the site has been inscribed in the world heritage list,” UNESCO Heritage Conservation Architect Joycelyn Mananghaya told AFP.
In a statement on its website, Red Bull said “respect for the environment was a priority from the beginning.”
“The team made certain that the plants and wildlife were neither damaged nor disturbed at any time during the event. All aspects were agreed with the locals, taking into consideration their traditions and culture,” the statement read.
Local congressman Teddy Baguilat Jr. said he’ll be looking into what consultations were made prior to filming, telling the Philippines’ ABS-CBN News he only learned about what happened from reporters.
“We’re all for tourism promotion. But at the end of the day, the rice terraces is an agricultural land. It’s meant for food production, not for extreme sports or leisure,” Baguilat Jr. said.
Red Bull made headlines last year when it sponsored an out-of-this-world sky dive jump by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner.
Baumgartner rose to a height of almost 39 kilometres above Earth, in a pressurized capsule attached to a specially-designed helium balloon, before leaping out and successfully skydiving back to the ground at supersonic speed.
Comments