List of World Heritage Sites grows by 13

by Kraig Becker on

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee just wrapped up its 33rd annual conference in Seville, Spain, where they added 13 new sites to their list of amazing locations around the globe, and made the unusual move of dropping one. The new list of World Heritage Sites now stands at 890.

Of the 13 new sites, 11 are cultural sites and 2 are natural. The two new natural sites are the Wadden Sea on the border between Germany and the Netherlands and the Dolomite Mountains in Italy. The cultural sites include such places as the Tower of Hercules in Spain, The Sacred City of Caral-Supe in Peru, and Sulamain-Too Sacred Mountain in Kyrgyzstan. For a complete list of the new sites, check out the official press release here.

The former World Heritage Site that was dropped from the list was the Elbe Valley in Dresden, Germany. The committee expressed concern over the fact that a new four-lane bridge was being built through the Valley, and even attempted to give warning of this action, placing the site on the Danger List back in 2006. When construction proceeding anyway, they felt they had no other choice, but to drop the Valley from their list.

Three other sites have also been put on notice that they could also be dropped in the future. The Belize Reef Reserve System in Belize was put on notice mainly due to the harvesting of mangrove trees and excessive development in the area. The Los Katios National Park in Columbia was added at the request of the Columbian government to help mobilize international efforts to protect the region and The Historical Monuments of Mtskheta in Georgia were listed as “in danger” over concerns with the preservation of the edifices located there.

Despite reports earlier this week, the Everglades National Park has not yet been placed back on the danger list. The committee intends to study the situation and make a more informed ruling in the future.

The new additions to the list are excelent, and it gives us an amazing life list just pursuing these World Heritiage Site. Forget the “1000 Places To See Before You Die” and just focus on these 890.

Everglades to be put back on U.N. endangered list?

by Kraig Becker on

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is meeting with a task force charged with overseeing the restoration of the Florida Everglades this week. He intends to tell them that the Obama administration will ask the United Nations World Heritage Committee to put the national park back on its endangered list when the committee meet in Spain this week.

Two years ago, in what has been viewed as a controversial decision, the Bush administration requested that the U.N. remove the Everglades from the list. At the time, the Department of the Interior defended the decision by citing progress being made in protecting the region and the species that lived there, despite the fact that the restoration program had failed to meet milestones, and was billions over budget.

The current administration believes restoring the Everglades National Park to the list of endangered places will send a strong signal to environmentalists that they are committed to the protecting the environment. If restored to the list, the park will join the Galapagos Islands, the Old City of Jerusalem and Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley as the other World Heritage Sites considered to be in danger. The Everglades were originally added to the list back in 1993 when the area was damaged by Hurricane Andrew and the effects of prolonged exposure to water pollution became known.

Despite the issues effecting the park, the Everglades remains a popular tourist destination. There are more than 156 miles of canoe/kayak and hiking trails, with 47 designated campsites, inside the 2500 square miles of subtropical forest that define the parks boundaries. The Park Service reports that over one million visitors experience the Everglades each year.

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Climbing Kilimanjaro with Roadmonkey

by Kraig Becker on

A few months back we wrote about travel company Roadmonkey, which offered unique travel experiences that combined adventure with the opportunity to leave a lasting impact on the places you visit. For instance, one of their 2009 expeditions is a mountain biking tour through the remote jungles of Vietnam that culminates with a volunteer project to build a farm that will grow fruits and vegetables on the campus of a boarding school in that country.

Their other 2009 expedition combines a project to build a clean water system to a school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with a climb on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Roadmonkey was founded by Paul von Zielbauer, who formerly worked as a war correspondent in Iraq. He is currently in Tanzania and guiding the team up Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. Throughout the trip he is providing regular updates on their progress for the National Geographic Adventure Blog.

The first of Paul’s blog entires can be found here. He reports that the team has arrived in Moshi, Tanzania, where he and nine other adventure travelers were just about to begin their six day trek up the mountain. On the morning that the post was written, it was raining quite hard, but everyone was eager to hit the trail and begin their climb none the less.

Over the course of the expedition, Paul and the others are expected to check-in and report on their progress, both on Kilimanjaro itself, and again while they are working on the new water system. The dispatches should be very interesting to follow and give some good insights what it is like to travel with Roadmonkey. Check in with the NG Adventure blog over the next week or so to follow their progress, and to see “voluntourism” in action.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Ibo

by Jon Bowermaster on

Ibo – officially Ilha Do Ibo, by the Portuguese who colonized it – is one of a string of 32 islands that make up the Quirimbas archipelago, separated from the Mozambique coast by just a shallow channel. Barely two miles long and two miles wide a fringe of reefs surrounds it; at low tide you can walk to the next island. On its main, slightly derelict beach fishermen hammer at boats turned on their sides and a pair of skinny boys walk the mangrove shallows with a net between them, trolling for baitfish. Just offshore cruise elegant-if-paint-flaked wooden dhows; their triangular white cloth sails making them look more windsurfer than sailboat. Ironically their masters can only fish when it’s windy, since most have no motors.

A grassy square of abandoned colonial houses in ice-cream pastels anchors the island’s main town (there are just three). Their grand size and wrought iron terraces and lampposts suggest prosperity. But the ironwork is rusted; the walls pitted with black mold and fig trees grow through the roofs. After the church, the grandest building on the square is the Customs House, pink-painted with ornate iron lattice along its roof. Inside, in a vague attempt at tourism, it has been turned into a tourist office. The unmanned display consists of an elephant skull, an old dining chair with a label reading “cadeira usada pelos portugueses” – chair used by the Portuguese – and a table laid out with a few coffee beans.

Ibo’s heyday was during the late 1800s, based on slaves and ivory. When slavery was abolished in the early 1900s and modern ships no longer needed to stop off so often for water and supplies, it faded. The island’s graves tell how, over the centuries, it attracted the Chinese, Arabs, British and Portuguese. Today it feels as if time has stopped since the Portuguese left abruptly in 1974, its population having fallen from 37,000 to fewer than 6,000. There are no cars, no banks, no postal service, no television or Internet and virtually no electricity … except at its lone and elegantly restored hotel, the Ibo Island Lodge (www.iboisland.com).

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One thing that sets Ibo apart from much of the rest of the Africa today – a continent on the verge of continent-wide drought – is an abundance of fresh water. For an hour I watch young boys come and go from a pair of wells in the center of town, pumping fresh, clear water into yellow plastic bottles with red screw tops. It comes from not far beneath the sand and according to locals seems bottomless. (For a good read on how the rest of Africa is dealing with serious drought, read my friend Andy Revkin’s recent. dotEarth report.)

“All day long it will come,” says my guide for the day, Ali, of the clear fresh water pouring from the rudimentary pump. “People even come from mainland Mozambique to get Ibo’s water. Maybe we can turn it into a business. What do you think?” I assure him that if he can figure out a way to export the island’s water, while preserving enough for local needs, he may have found his own path to riches, Ibo-style.

Read more from Jon at Bowermaster’s Adventures.

Brits welcome in North Korea for Arirang

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The ban on UK visitors in the DPRK has been removed for the summer, according to an e-mail announcement from Koryo Tours. This was the last of the restrictions that the world was waiting for North Korean authorities to lift. Citizens from the UK will be able to travel to the reclusive Communist country this year for Arirang. A similar bar on travel from the United States was removed back in April.

For travel to North Korea for Arirang, little seems to have been affected by the recent sentencing of American journalists accused to have entered the country illegally … with the exception of an air of concern which must obviously enter the mind of anyone considering travel to this unusual corner of the world.