World Heritage site remains on 'in danger' list

Описание: (27 Jun 2019) LEAD IN  
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee is preparing to meet in Azerbaijan to examine 36 nominations for inscription on the list of World Heritage sites.
UNESCO also complies a list of sites that are considered 'in danger'.
In the United States the Everglades National Park has been on the list of 'World Heritage in Danger' list since 2010, threatened by historic human interference and invasive species.

STORY-LINE :
Welcome to the Everglades, where alligators, racoons, vultures and large snakes roam.
North America's largest sub-tropical wilderness reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but one that is threatened, and so it was  added to the list for 'in danger' world heritage sites nine years ago.
"This designation is really the result of many decades of impacts" says Cara Capp, a conservation champion, working on behalf of the Everglades.
For thousands of years water flowed south from Lake Okeechobee and into the "River of Grass."
From the late 1800s well into the 1900s, business interests with government cooperation sought to drain the Everglades so land could be developed.
Water that naturally flowed south from Lake Okeechobee through the Everglades to Florida Bay was diverted east and west into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers and out to sea.
According to Capp, 70% less water now flows into the Everglades, leaving it parched.  
"So, the downstream Everglades national Park ecosystem has really suffered with not only less water flow, but impaired water quality. And so, this designation is really the result of many decades of impacts for the Everglades but it's also coming at a time when we're working very hard to improve the quality of the ecosystem and restore some of what's been lost."
The number of wading birds are often an indicator of how well the wetlands are faring says Capp.
" We often look to the wading birds as an indicator of how we are doing with restoration. On the years we get more flow to the Everglades, we see more wading birds nest, in years with less flow we see far fewer birds. So we look to the diversity of birds to tell us about the health of the Everglades."
Other threats to native wildlife include invasive species such as Burmese pythons which have no natural predators in the Everglades ecosystem.
"Invasive species are a huge issue in the Everglades pythons are a tremendous problem, invasive plants too. So it's very difficult to track down pythons, they are very stealthy they'll survive well and they will eat almost anything. So the faster we can continue to restore the Everglades and invest in new technologies to track invasive species the better" explains Capp.
Capp says a comprehensive plan is already in place, in the form of bi-partisan legislation enacted in 2000 during the last crisis.  
"The program has been chronically underfunded. So, the first thing that any of us could do to better support the Everglades restoration is to make sure that the projects are funded so we can flow more water south."
In March 2019 US President Donald Trump released a budget proposal which included $63 million for Everglades restoration projects, about a third of what Florida lawmakers and environmental advocates requested.

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