Salazar Applauds World Heritage Committee's Decision to Return Everglades National Park to Danger List

WASHINGTON – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today welcomed the decision of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to once again add the Everglades National Park to the List of World Heritage in Danger, symbolizing both the United States' commitment to the restoration of the Everglades ecosystem and the administration's efforts to restore the role of sound science in the decision-making process.

The Everglades has been on the World Heritage List since 1979. After Hurricane Andrew struck, the committee placed the park on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1993, based on concerns regarding the deterioration of its ecological integrity. The park was removed from the danger list in 2007 at the request of the previous administration. The Obama administration asked the committee to put the park back on the list.

“The Everglades remains one of our world's most treasured – and most threatened – places,” Salazar said. “The federal government must once again stand up and meet its responsibilities to Everglades restoration so that one day we can remove the park from the list of sites that in danger.”

“With the President's strong commitment to restoration through the budget and through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there is hope for a new day in the Everglades,” he said.

President Obama has substantially increased federal support for Everglades restoration, the largest ecosystem restoration project in history.

The 21-nation World Heritage Committee oversees the list of World Heritage Sites that are of significant cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity. Sites that are deemed to be in jeopardy are placed on the danger list.

The list is intended to focus attention and, thereby, resources of the international community and encourage action to address those threats.

The committee currently is meeting in Brasilia, Brazil. The request to add the Everglades to the danger list was met with a very positive reception from the members of the World Heritage Committee. Many publicly congratulated the United States for demonstrating leadership in using the danger list as it was originally intended, a tool for raising international awareness about threats to World Heritage sites and galvanize world-wide support to address those threats.