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World's Fair site named endangered monument

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

10:50 AM EDT, June 6, 2007

Rising seas, spreading deserts, intensifying weather and other harbingers of climate change are threatening cultural landmarks from Canada to Antarctica, the World Monuments Fund said Tuesday as it released its latest list of the world's most endangered sites.

This year's list is the first to add global warming to a roster of forces the organization says are threatening humanity's architectural and cultural heritage. Other factors include political conflict, pollution, development and tourism pressures, and a thirst for modernity in buildings and lifestyles.

"On this list, man is indeed the real enemy," Bonnie Burnham, the president of the New York-based fund, said in a statement. "But, just as we caused the damage in the first place, we have the power to repair it."

The U.S. list includes sites as diverse as historic Route 66, the fabled east-west highway flanked by eccentric, deteriorating attractions; the New York State Pavilion, a rusting remnant of the 1964 World's Fair in Queens; and the historic neighborhoods of New Orleans, La., where the Monuments Fund pointed to the destruction done by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the potential for more damage from future storms and rising waters.

New Orleans is among at least six historic places with futures clouded by a changing climate, it said.

The fund's "100 Most Endangered Sites" list, issued every two years, is intended as a cultural clarion call, and the organization suggests it has been a successful one. More than three-quarters of the places listed in previous years are no longer imperiled, according to the organization, which has given more than $47 million to help save some 214 sites since 1996.

This year's list includes sites in 59 countries, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The United States is home to more than any other country, with seven sites or types of sites -- one entry is the "Main Street Modern"-style public buildings that symbolized progress after World War II.

There are six sites each in Peru, and five each in India and Turkey.

On Herschel Island, Canada, melting permafrost threatens ancient Inuit sites and a historic whaling town. In Chinguetti, Mauritania, the desert is encroaching on an ancient mosque. In Antarctica, a hut once used by British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott has survived almost a century of freezing conditions but is now in danger of being engulfed by increasingly heavy snows.

Other sites face different perils. Political conflicts are clouding the future of all Iraq's cultural heritage sites and the remains of two ancient, giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan's province of Bamiyan, in the monuments fund's view. The statues were destroyed by the Taliban regime in 2001, but there have been some efforts to restore them.

Growth pressures are being felt in places such as Ireland's Hill of Tara, an earthen fort where Celtic chieftains jockeyed for power and legend says St. Patrick confronted paganism. A planned highway, intended to ease commuting between Dublin and a northwestern suburb, would pass near the hill.

Other places, such as Peru's famed Machu Picchu, are considered threatened by their own popularity. A new bridge recently opened to cater to backpackers headed to Machu Picchu, although government cultural experts said it could bring too many tourists to the delicate Inca ruins.

A group of experts chose the sites on the World Monuments Fund list from hundreds of nominations, submitted by governments, conservationists and others. The selections were based on the sites' importance and the urgency of the dangers to them, the organization said.