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| ADDING TO THE WORLD’S TREASURE CHEST |
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Advising on conserving unique landscapes and improving their management is a core service of the Union. We continue our work with the World Heritage Convention to identify sites, and to engage partners and communities to ensure they are really conserved, and continue to evolve to higher management standards.
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The Kvarken Archipelago, situated in the Gulf of Bothnia off the coast of Finland, includes 5,600 islands and islets covering a total of 194,400 hectares. The Archipelago is rising from the sea in glacio-isostatic uplift, whereby the land lifts at incredibly fast rates. The shoreline advances, islands appear and unite, peninsulas expand, and lakes evolve into marshes and peat fens. IUCN advised this site to World Heritage, now inscribed as the 336,900 hectares High Coast/Kvarken Archipelago shared with Sweden.
Off the coast of Colombia, the Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary provides critical deepwater habitat with steep wall and caves for giant grouper, billfish, short-nosed ragged-toothed shark, hammerhead, silky sharks, whale sharks and tuna. Malpelo supports endangered birds like swallow-tailed gull, masked booby and Hawaiian petrel. Last year, IUCN agreed that the Sanctuary should become part of the critical marine biological corridor with the Galapagos, Cocos and Coiba Islands World Heritage sites. Its 857,150 hectare marine area is the largest no-fishing zone in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.
One of Earth’s most charismatic and endangered animals just won a refuge. The Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuary covers 924,500 hectares across seven nature reserves and nine scenic parks in the Qionglai and Jiajin Mountains. Two decades ago, China proposed a small version for UNESCO status, but was urged to return with a larger comprehensive package. It did, and IUCN helped to inscribe the Sanctuary as a World Heritage Site. It protects a third of the world’s giant panda population and the largest remaining contiguous area of habitat for giant panda, red panda, snow leopard and clouded leopard, all threatened with extinction on our Red List. It is botanically enriched by flora – 6,000 species in 1,000 genera.
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