Photograph by Chris Johns
Alligators, wood storks, tarpon, and more than 600 other vertebrate species in Everglades National Park faced a wobbly future in 1993 when the World Heritage program put the Florida wilderness on the list of sites in danger. Pollution, sprawl, and erratic water flows were destroying the largest surviving subtropical wetland in North America. The red flag raised by the listing helped build pressure on political leaders to finance research and—finally this year—to approve an ambitious plan to restore the park to a more natural state.
The danger list currently contains 33 sites, from five war-damaged wildlife sanctuaries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the decaying monuments of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
