| Lanka site in heritage list |
BRASILIA A region of mountainous forests in Sri Lanka and an isolated archipelago off Hawaii have been added to Unesco’s World Heritage list, officials of the UN cultural and scientific body said on Saturday.
The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation decided to add the two sites on Friday as it held a 10-day meeting to revise the list in Brasilia.
On Friday, it added Florida’s Everglades and Madagascar’s tropical forest to a list of imperiled world heritage sites, which is meant to ring alarm bells and encourage protective measures. The Unesco officials registered lesser threats to Peru’s Machu Picchu ruins and the Galapagos Islands.
The decision brought to 35 the number of unique cultural or environmental sites considered to be in danger.
Other spots included on the list were Georgia’s Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery, and the Buganda Kingdom Tombs in Uganda.
The committee determined that the Everglades National Park, a mangrove swamp sanctuary for birds and reptiles in southeast US, “because of serious and continuing degradation of its aquatic ecosystem.”
Water inflows have been greatly reduced and pollution levels have increased to a point that marine life is dying off, it said.
Agence France-Presse
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