Seven New World Heritage Natural Sites Named by UN

Maryann Mott
for National Geographic News

July 15, 2005

The UN this week designated seven natural landmarks as new World
Heritage sites—places the World Heritage Committee considers to be
of outstanding value to all humanity:

Coiba National Park, Panama: Site of islands that harbor many species not found anywhere else

Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex, Thailand: Rugged, mountainous home to many rare species

Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord, Norway: Among the world's longest, deepest, and most scenic fjords

Gulf of California, Mexico: Home to 39 percent of marine-mammal species

Shiretoko Peninsula, Japan: Marine-terrestrial region notable for the southernmost instance of seasonal sea ice

Vredefort Dome, South Africa: World's oldest and largest known meteorite impact site

Wadi Al-Hitan ("whale valley"), Egypt: Fossil site of last known legged whale (See desert whale photo.)

(For more on the new sites, see sidebar.)

With representatives of 21 countries, the World Heritage Committee is an arm of the United Nation's Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The group made the "natural site" designations Wednesday as part of their meeting this week in Durban, South Africa.

Later today the committee is expected to announce cultural-site designations.

"Outstanding Universal Value"

In all, 795 cultural and natural sites in more than 130 countries are now protected under the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. More than 180 countries have signed the 1972 treaty.

Member countries nominate new World Heritage sites each year and agree to preserve existing World Heritage sites by providing appropriate legal and regulatory frameworks.

The protected sites are as unique and diverse as the wilds of East Africa's Serengeti, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and Statue of Liberty in the United States.

One World Heritage site is currently in danger of being delisted because of its inability to stop poachers. The Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba National Park, it seems, is unable to stop hunters from killing the few remaining northern white rhinoceroses.

After a long and heated debate earlier this week, the committee agreed that if the rhinos were to be killed off in Garamba, the park would no longer make be a place of "outstanding universal value"—the basic criterion for World Heritage sites.

"The northern white rhino is a flagship species for this site, and every effort must be made to protect the remaining five to ten individuals," said David Sheppard, head of the World Conservation Union's delegation to the meeting.

The committee will visit Garamba later this year to evaluate the situation there. In the meantime the Congolese were asked to relocate a number of the rhinos to Kenya for their safety.

Everest in Danger?

Also at this week's meeting, environmental groups asked that Mount Everest—the tallest peak in the world—be placed on the committee's List of World Heritage in Danger.

The Everest advocates, led by Pro Public/Friends of the Earth Nepal, argued that runoff from melting glaciers, caused by a change in climate, has swollen Himalayan lakes, increasing the risk of catastrophic flooding.

Environmental groups also called for coral reefs in Belize and glaciers in Peru to be added to the danger list because of climate changes caused by greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries.

Instead, the World Heritage Committee decided to form a yearlong task force to study the threat posed by climate change to all World Heritage sites—including Nepal's Sagarmatha National Park, where Mount Everest dominates the landscape.

Prakash Sharma, executive director of Pro Public, said waiting to take action on Everest could be a big mistake.

"The problems created by climate change in the park are immense," he said. "Large glacial lakes are forming which could burst at any moment, destroying the lives and livelihoods of local people."

About 30 places are currently on the danger list and face threats from mining and pollution to war and poaching, according to the committee.

The aim of the danger list is to raise awareness of threats to World Heritage sites and seek international support to mitigate the problems. Before the meeting, Sir Edmund Hillary—the Briton who in 1953 joined the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in the first successful summiting of Everest—supported efforts to put the mountain on the danger list.

"The warming of the environment of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years," Hilary said in a statement.

While no new places were added to the danger list, the committee did remove three sites, citing progress in their conservation: Sangay National Park, Ecuador; the city of Timbuktu, Mali; and the Butrint archaeological site in Albania.

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