EcoWorldly

The Italian heaven for climbers, hikers and skiers from around the world is moving closer to join earth’s cultural and natural wonders on the United Nations World Heritage List.

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The World Heritage Committee’s technical advisory body on natural heritage, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), gave Dolomite area its seal of approval. The committee is still considering the application and the final verdict will be at the end of June when it will meet in Seville to evaluate applications from around the world.

In addition to the Dolomites, the central Italian waterfall Cascata delle Marmore is also hoping to join the 174 natural heritage sites already on the list (42 among these in Italy). ”I’m extremely supportive of the idea because I believe the Dolomites are completely unique, they cannot be compared to any other mountain in the world,” said Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who has been climbing in the Dolomites for many years.

”Their beauty derives from the contrast between the green of the meadows and the vertical rock faces and the composition of the rock itself, which changes colour throughout the day”. Messner, now one of the leading voices of the World Heritage campaign, first suggested the idea in 1992 but it took another 10 years before it had enough political support to get off the ground. The first application was made in December 2004, with backing from national and regional governments. In 2005, provincial authorities joined the campaign.

In September 2006, the IUCN launched its official investigation of the area.Twenty-two groups of mountains were originally included in the application, based on four of the permitted World Heritage criteria for natural sites: exceptional natural beauty, significant ongoing geological processes, significant ongoing ecological and biological processes, and significant natural habitats for conservation of biological diversity. Following the IUCN’s conclusions, the number of Dolomite groups included in the application was reduced to nine, and the criteria were narrowed to natural beauty and geological processes. The final candidate area, which has now received a green light from the IUCN, spans 142,000 hectares, with a further 85,000 border areas.

Image courtesy of ingo.ronner on Flickr under Creative Commons

See also: Dolomite, Official Website

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