Dead Lands Walking: The World's Most Endangered Destinations
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 06.15.07
Photo credit: Michelle McFarlane
If you haven't already made considerable headway into your travel wish list, you're about to run out of luck, says Forbes, because your would-be destinations may have vanished by the time you get your travel agent on the line.
“There are thousands of places in the world that are endangered,” says Kecia Fong, a conservator at the Getty Conservation Institute, as quoted in the magazine. “The kinds of sites that are most endangered have rapid development like building roads or hotels to deal with an influx of tourists.”
With the additional toll that global warming, pollution, and deforestation are taking on the world's historic sites and natural wonders, it should come as little surprise that these popular tourist spots are in jeopardy. So which locales are on death watch?
The Galapagos Islands face the threat of over-tourism: 60,000 people visited these islands off the coast of Ecuador in 1996. That number more than doubled in 2006, according to the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands.
The Chan Chan Archaeological Zone in Peru? You can blame global warming, which has been bringing torrential rain and winds to the area, resulting in the gradual erosion of the structures.
Global warming may also wipe out Mount Kilimanjaro’s ice fields sometime between 2015 and 2020, before claiming the final glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park in the next 20 to 30 years.
Kathmandu Valley in Nepal faces urbanization and pollution, while the sacred religious sites in Tibet are being disrupted by mainland Chinese flooding in and opening businesses.
Illegal deforestation has the Mexican Michoacan Mountains' number. Meanwhile, rising water levels caused by urbanization in Luxor, Egypt, which includes the Temple Complex of Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, may soon destroy the final resting place of the ancient pharaohs. And if you've always dreamed about chasing schools of fish while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, you'll want to make the trip Down Under soon—warming ocean temperatures are poised to be the largest marine life system in the world's downfall. :: Forbes
See also: :: Choose Your Own Eco-Adventure and :: Historic Sites in Danger
"While some historic and natural sites might have a future, no amount of money or work can save other places, such as those affected by global warming, since it’s projected to worsen.
The point? Visit these places while they’re still around."
WTF!!??
Err yeah! Let's all fly around the world right now and produce even more Co2 thus contributing even further to climate change to make sure that we can see these places but that future generations who grow up in those places wont be able to have any local heritage left. NICE ONE!
I'm not saying don't fly at all - but to actually encourage people to fly MORE - that's just insane!!!
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JMC: Whoa there, Forbes' words, not mine, so you might want to take it up with them, instead. We'd have added a note about plane travel but we didn't want to insult our readers' intelligence.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to second that. Good intentions, bad message.
I third that!! Forbes??... thats who we should be looking to to get informed. Not surprised. These destinations are officially off my list. Very sad but necessary.
I'm think they were just starting off a paragraph, guys. They weren't actually promoting travel.
Well, Treehugger.com, you must be doing a good job for people to get upset because they think your telling them to visit these places before they are gone. We must have learned well to realize that by doing so we would make their situations worse. So keep up the good work so we can be more informed and make better choices!
isn't there a way to Eco-tourism? So people can still visit these wonders without destroying them? I'm all for boat travel, world biking or whatever it takes.