Nearly two dozen World Heritage Sites, which have been found by the United Nations Eduational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization to offer outstanding global value for their cultural and natural resources, can be found in the United States. And the National Park Service has just made it easier to locate them.
The Park Service's newest online travel itinerary page touches on the 22 World Heritage Sites located in the United States. On this site you can discover fun facts and interesting background information about sites across the country, from the Statue of Liberty National Monument to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, which have universal significance.
Most of the World Heritage Sites in the United States are administered by the National Park Service. They also are listed entirely or contain listings in the National Register of Historic Places, which is expanded and maintained by the National Park Service.
The World Heritage Sites in the United States itinerary is the 60th in the online Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Series. The series supports historic preservation, promotes public awareness of history, and encourages people to visit historic places throughout the country. The National Park Service’s Heritage Education Services and its Office of International Affairs produced this itinerary in partnership with the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers.
Comments
In the spirit of ec's approach to questioning comments, perhaps he'd like to give us some specific examples of how the organization in question in the above comment is "telling us how to run our parks." :-)
Thanks Rick, I agee with your comment. If it wasn't for UNESCO, then places like Virunga could fall victim to the parasitic and extremely political nature of resource extraction. "They're just freaking monkeys, and no one cares about monkeys"... or so the shills claim. Because it's a world heritage site, I believe it's helped promote it internationally, and promote a better economy for the people around that park. While Rwanda was falling victim to a civil war, the intenational cries to save the place and the Mountain Gorillas may have saved it from complete disintegration.
Well Jthomas - requiring the park to write a report would be one.
Semanics, but I'd say writing a report is merely a paperwork exercise; doesn't have any impact on "running the park." You'll disagree, so we can move on :-)
A useless paperwork excercise.
Gary seems to think that WHS has a major impact on the operations on the parks and they would be polluted wastelands (my paraphrasing his position) if not under UNESCO's watchful eye. Believe it or not, I am more in your camp and believe that the Parks would not operate in a substantially different way than they do if WHS designation didn't exist. So the alternative is either WHS has no meaninful impact on the park - and thus is a worthless excercise, or WHS is materially changing how we managae our Parks and thus is a parasitic international organization telling us how to run our Parks. Either way, I don't like it.
Ohh boy. . . who cares. Let's move on from the perpetual trolling. He truly takes the cake in cluelessness and 99.99% of the time doesn't even know what he is talking about. He's always against everything, it seems. Stick to real estate. Maybe "titles" and "signing them" to exchange properties so realtors can just reap 5% of the cost is useless, a waste of time to all parties involved, and requires too much paperwork too. EC has probably never even glanced at the rules of procedures, nor has any clue about how parks are nominated, and if they do make it on the list, how it is a pretty nice token of recongintion. That's all I see this as - a TOKEN. It's the National park equivalent to being at the top of the chain.. so once again, let's not allow him to "rowl" everyone up, like he loves to do. It's like his daily drug to troll this site.
I think "the criteria" that is required to be a WHS being followed has an impact. There's standards in Air Pollution, stream equality, and trying to keep things such as resource extraction out of the areas. If it's a historic site, maintaining the cultural site so that it remains preserved so that visitation, and even weathering from eroding it is a top priority. Having international standards so that many parks around the globe stick to standards is important.. Otherwise, they all become like a local city park in texas. And if these places don't continue to meet the standards, then they simply get demoted and pulled off the list. Regardless, of what the NPS travellers resident troll thinks, I think it's important that the top parks in this nation do meet some levels of environmental protection criteria to be recognized as World Heritage Sites, and to a lesser extent Biosphere Reserves. Could you imagine the world we'd live in if the tea trolls had their way with everything.. Boy, we'd be back in the dark ages.... Science would be shunned because it would offend their mytholgy.
No Gary, that is what you are calling for, the rejection of modern civilization in favor of "Wilderness".
Rick, thank you for a very thoughtful post. Your comments echo my own experience just in Yosemite. I meet visitors from all over the world, they are all delighted that we Americans are sharing in the world heritage designations. It means much to them as well as the vast majority of NPS employees and most Americans. It is disconcerting to read comments that think these efforts are meaningless or somehow not in the best interests of international cooperation and good will. The black helicopter conspiracies at their worse in my own view.