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List of 100 most endangered sites issued for 2004

burrup rock art photo courtesy FARA

25 September 2003 - NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 1908 explorer's hut in Antarctica, ancient palaces in war-torn Iraq, aboriginal rock carvings in Australia and Battersea Power Station in London are among the 100 Most Endangered Sites listed for conservation on Wednesday by the World Monuments Fund.

Probably the most famous sites on the fifth such biennial list, selected from hundreds of local nominations by 10 international experts, are the Great Wall of China and the New York neighborhood attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

The 2004 World Monuments Watch (http://www.wmf.org) for the first time encompasses all seven continents. It includes 80 sites never before listed, a spokeswoman said. The group is "close to perfect" in its record of saving sites, said John Stubbs, vice president for projects, so almost all the delisted sites were successfully preserved.

In addition to Ernest Shackleton's expedition hut in Antarctica and the Dampier rock art complex in Australia, unusual first-timers on the list include the entire steam-powered former railway system of Paraguay and the remote mud-and-thatch cliff villages of the Dogon people in Mali.

Threats to the endangered sites range from natural disaster and aging to human neglect, "inappropriate development," tourists, government policies and war.

In the last category, the Nineveh and Nimrud Palaces in Iraq, Afghanistan's Ghazni Minarets and archeological remains of a city born nearly 4,000 years ago near the present-day Palestinian city of Nablus all offer special problems for the preservationists because of the dangers of war, Stubbs said.

"We really can't work in places where it's unsafe for the various experts that might go in and indeed locals that might participate. All of our projects are designed to be by, for and about the locals as much as possible. It's still much too chaotic in Iraq to begin to do some physical repair and restoration work." However, planning has begun, he said.

Lower Manhattan was added to the endangered list immediately after the 9/11 attacks to ensure there was a preservationist perspective to the rebuilding. "Let's make sure to do it in a sensible way that respects the fact that lower Manhattan's one of the most intense historical sites in the whole of the New World," said Stubbs.

Of the 100 sites, the United States and Mexico have six each. China and Turkey have five, while India, Peru and the United Kingdom have four. Europe has 33, the Americas 31, Africa and the Middle East 18, Asia 16, and Australia and Antarctica one apiece.

Source: Reuters

World Monuments Fund announces 2004 World Monuments Watch List of 100 most endangered sites

24 September 2003 - New York, NY - The World Monuments Fund (WMF), the foremost private, nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the historic, artistic, and architectural heritage of humankind, today released its 2004 World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites. The biennial Watch list is a call to action on behalf of threatened cultural-heritage monuments worldwide. By bringing the sites to international attention, the list helps to raise the funds needed for their rescue and often spurs local governments and communities to take an active role in protecting cultural icons in their regions. For many landmarks, inclusion on the Watch list is the best—and perhaps the only—hope for survival.

This year, for the first time in the eight-year history of the World Monuments Watch program, the list encompasses every continent, including Antarctica, where Ernest Shackleton’s hut is located. This geographic reach reflects the broad definition of "cultural-heritage monument," a term that may refer to an individual building, a work of monumental sculpture, a town center, or an entire cultural landscape.

Each site on the Watch list sheds light on the people who created it and in many cases continue to use it. The 2004 sites range from the Nimrud and Nineveh Palaces, in Iraq, to the North Family Shaker Site, in New York State; from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis Brown House, in California, to Strawberry Hill, Sir Horace Walpole’s house, in England; from Historic Lower Manhattan, to the sixteenth-century Guaira Historic City, in Venezuela.

American Express is the founding sponsor of the World Monuments Watch program.

WMF President Bonnie Burnham states, "The World Monuments Watch program identifies a stunning range of endangered sites and brings them to the attention of the public, preservation professionals, and local governments. By working to preserve these treasures, WMF and its partners are helping to save for future generations the structures and places that tell us who we are. Be it a palace, a cave painting, an archaeological site, or a town, the sites on the Watch list speak of human aspirations and achievements. To lose any one of them would diminish us all. The World Monuments Fund is particularly grateful to American Express for enabling it to continue this important work."

Kenneth I. Chenault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Express, remarks, "American Express is proud to be associated with the extraordinary work and dedication of the World Monuments Fund and the preservation experts around the world whose task it is to safeguard these witnesses to our shared past. We are happy to add our company’s voice to the urgent call to protect the world’s endangered heritage, and we encourage others to join us in saving individual sites and in supporting the Watch program as a whole."

2004 Endangered Sites
In addition to the first site in Antarctica, this year’s Watch list features for the first time sites in Australia, Ecuador, Finland, the Palestinian Territories, Paraguay, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, and Trinidad and Tobago, demonstrating both growing awareness of the World Monuments Watch program and increased recognition worldwide of the importance of preserving cultural landmarks. Taken together, the sites on the list comprise a diversity of building types, periods, and threats, and include 33 places in Europe, 16 in Asia, 1 in Australia, 18 in Africa and the Middle East, 31 in the Americas, and 1 in Antarctica.

As in 2002—when such buildings as the A. Conger Goodyear House and R. M. Schindler House and Studio were listed—this year’s Watch list includes several modern sites. These include both dwellings, such as the Ennis Brown House, in Los Angeles, perhaps the finest of Wright’s "textile-block" houses, and industrial and engineering sites, such as the unique area surrounding the Panama Canal, which is threatened by development. Also included are such well-known monuments as Stowe House, in Buckinghamshire, England, one of the greatest estates of eighteenth-century England, which is at risk from inadequate maintenance; and part of the Great Wall of China and its surroundings, which suffer from vandalism and erosion by tourists.

Following are examples of a range of sites on the 2004 Watch list:

• Usumacinta River Cultural Landscape, Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and Yaxchilán, Mexico—The Mayan cities of Yaxchilán and Piedras Negras, located along the Usumacinta River, were settled in the early years of the first millennium A.D. The ancient cities reached their apogee in the mid-eighth century, when most of the structures that we see today—temples, pyramids, and ballcourts—were constructed.
• In addition to looting, erosion, exposure to the elements, exuberant vegetation, and, in the case of Piedras Negras, inappropriate excavation techniques nearly a century ago, these sites are threatened by the proposed construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Usumacinta. Any of the dam scenarios under consideration will destroy both of the ancient cities, as well as more than a dozen sites between them that have yet to be fully documented. The World Monuments Fund has commissioned a study of the potential impact of dam construction, in the hope of averting a cultural-heritage disaster.
• Nimrud and Nineveh Palaces, near Mosul, Iraq—Nimrud and Nineveh, located on the Tigris River, were successive capitals of the Assyrian Empire at the height of its power. Founded by King Assurnasirpal II (883–59 B.C.) and King Sennacherib (704–681 B.C), each was a large walled city in which the king’s elaborate palace was the most important building. The palaces—the only preserved Assyrian palaces in the world—held sculpture of exceptionally high quality, including depictions of the kings’ successful military campaigns.
  Although in previous centuries Western museums mined the palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh for artworks, until recently many panels, figurines, and sculptures remained in situ, having been uncovered during excavations and left on site. However, twelve years of sanctions against Iraq dramatically limited the ability of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities to control looting, and sculptures from both sites appeared on the international art market. Further looting and vandalism followed the 2003 Iraq war.
  The palaces are important testaments to one of the greatest civilizations of all time. It is critical that the market for their sculptural decoration be reduced through publication of site inventories, and that their structures are stabilized and conserved.
• Helsinki-Malmi Airport, Finland—As Modernism becomes increasingly recognized as an integral part of our architectural and cultural heritage, WMF’s preservation efforts are extending beyond residential and commercial sites to embrace a broad range of building types, including recent industrial and technological structures. Reflecting this, the 2004 Watch list includes the Helsinki-Malmi Airport. With its acclaimed functionalist architecture, the Airport, which opened in 1936, is a representative and beautiful example of airport development in Europe in the early days of commercial aviation.
  Although the Airport has two landmarked buildings, and has been in continuous use since its construction, the city of Helsinki wants to demolish it to make way for housing for up to 10,000 people. As a result, the owners and operators of the Helisnki-Malmi Airport, along with local residents and citizens, have formed the Friends of Malmi Airport Society to seek its preservation as an architectural treasure that still serves its original function.
• Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, London, England—Strawberry Hill, home of writer, commentator, and antiquarian Horace Walpole (1717–97), is celebrated both for its innovative architecture and design and its association with Walpole. It was built in 1698 as a modest house; between 1747 and 1792, Walpole transformed it into what he called "a little Gothic castle," and it remains the finest extant example of the Georgian Gothic revival. Well-known even in its own time, Walpole’s house, with its towers, battlements, gilded ceilings, and painted glass showing rustic and Biblical scenes and heraldry, established the taste for the Gothic. Walpole designed the interior of Strawberry Hill to showcase his extensive collections of art and antiquities. He also established a press there, publishing works by Thomas Grey, Joseph Spence, Hannah Moore, and others.
  Strawberry Hill is threatened by inappropriate use. Owned by a teacher-training college, it is frequently rented for private parties and as a location for unsupervised filming, and has suffered significant harm as a result: The Renaissance leaded-glass windows have been broken, the eighteenth-century interior has been seriously damaged, and some of the objects in the house have been stolen. Negotiations are in progress to transfer ownership of the property from the college to the Strawberry Hill Preservation Trust to allow funds to be raised solely for the conservation of the house, and to secure and increase appropriate public access.
• Tamansari Water Castle, Kraton, Indonesia—Tamansari was an elaborate pleasure park and palace complex built in 1758 for Sultan Hamengku Buwono I of the Kingdom of Yogyakarta. Consisting of interrelated gardens and structures, the complex includes a mosque, meditation chambers, bathing pools, and a series of eighteen water gardens and pavilions surrounded by artificial lakes. It is an impressive example of royal architecture of its time and place, and opens a window onto the ways of life of the sultan and his entourage.
  The Tamansari complex fell into disuse following an earthquake in 1867, which destroyed several buildings and drained the pools and lakes. Over time, squatters began to inhabit the deserted pavilions and build homes in the former lakebeds, and the buildings were allowed to deteriorate over the course of a century. In 1970, plans were made to prepare Tamansari as a tourist destination, and restored five structures. The site’s remaining historic structures have numerous problems, including incorporation into newer buildings. Tamansari is in need of a comprehensive conservation-management plan.
• North Family Shaker Site, New York State, United States—Once the spiritual and physical center of the American Shaker movement, the village of Mount Lebanon, New York, originally comprised 6,000 acres and 100 buildings. With ten extant original buildings, the village’s North Family Site is one of the most intact portions of the original Mount Lebanon, which today has been reduced to seventy-two acres and fewer than forty structures. However, the buildings on the North Family site are in a state of advanced neglect. The Great Stone Barn, for example, has been untouched since it was decimated by fire in 1972.
  The North Family Site is uniquely suited to house the Shaker Museum and Library, currently located nearby in Old Chatham, New York. The Museum holds the world’s preeminent collection of Shaker objects and artifacts, some eighty percent of which are originally from Mount Lebanon. Together, this collection, the important Library, and the preserved Mount Lebanon buildings could provide an unparalleled resource for the study of the American Shaker movement, an important and fascinating aspect of American cultural, religious, and material history. Yet despite a viable plan, lack of funding continues to stymie further action.
• Dampier Rock Art Complex, Australia—The Dampier Archipelago, in the Pilbara region of northwestern Australia, is home to the world’s largest concentration of petroglyphs. This outstanding body of rock art is largely considered to be the greatest non-European cultural-heritage site in that country. The range of motifs found at the Dampier Rock Art Complex covers the entire worldview of the Aboriginal Yaburara tribe, of which only six known survivors remain.
  During the 1960s and again in the 1980s, major industrial facilities were established on the Burrup Peninsula. Current plans by the Government for further extensions to this industrial complex call for thirty-eight percent of the Peninsula’s land area to be occupied by petrochemical and other plants. Twenty percent of the rock art at the Dampier Complex has already been destroyed by the industrial development and what remains is rapidly deteriorating due to airborne pollution. Efforts are underway to convince the Government to relocate the planned industrial development, and to have the Dampier Rock Art Site designated as a National Park, controlled in partnership with traditional Aboriginal custodians.
• Shackleton’s Hut, Antarctica—Shackleton’s Hut, built in 1908, is one of only six intact wooden buildings that remain from the age of Antarctic exploration and the only building in Antarctica built by and associated with the achievements of legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. The Hut is thus of both scientific and historic importance. Designed to withstand extreme conditions, the building itself is well preserved. However, the kennels and the artifacts inside and outside are in poor condition. Threats include environmental degradation, micro-organism attacks, blizzards and snow, and the impact of increasing human visitation, which has brought looting.
  Conservation work was undertaken sporadically from the 1960s until 1987, when the Antarctic Heritage Trust was formed specifically to preserve Shackleton’s Hut and four other buildings. At this time, a regular program of conservation was begun. A management plan for all the buildings was prepared in 1997, and a conservation plan for Shackleton’s Hut was completed in December 2002. A strong conservation-advocacy program and financial support is needed to complete the work.
• Richtersveld Cultural Landscape, Northern Cape Province, South Africa—The Richtersveld, in the northwestern corner of South Africa, is the only area in which the nomadic agricultural system of the KhoeKhoe peoples, along with associated architecture and other cultural practices, survives. A semi-arid region, the Richtersveld is hauntingly beautiful and rich in biological diversity. Although the region includes a national park, survival of its indigenous cultures is at risk. The Richtersveld Cultural Landscape is the first Watch list site in the Sub-Sahara.
  With control of the area only recently returned to the indigenous peoples following the fall of apartheid, there are as of yet no planning or organizational procedures for the recognition and protection of material culture. Additionally, the people who live in the Richtersveld face environmental and labor-related risks, largely connected to diamond mining, which is the largest source of income in the Richtersveld. With the post-apartheid revival of interest in their ethnic identity, the residents of the Richtersveld are working to revitalize their traditions. But in order to do so they need more data on those traditions, as well as the development of conservation techniques and a protection and management plan.

World Monuments Watch List
Launched in 1995, the biennial World Monuments Watch, with its list of 100 Most Endangered Sites, is one of the major program areas of the World Monuments Fund. In order to create the Watch list, WMF calls for nominations of sites from ministries of culture across the world, all United States embassies, every national committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and international and local preservation groups and professionals. All nominations must include not only information on the value of the site and the threats it confronts, but also a concrete proposal for action that has local support.

The World Monuments Fund then convenes an independent panel of international experts to review the hundreds of nominations received and select 100 of them for inclusion on the list. The selection is based on the significance of the sites, the urgency of the need for support, and the viability of the conservation plan. (A list of panel members for the 2004 list is available.)

Previous lists were released in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002, and included selections ranging from widely known landmarks such as the Petra archaeological site and Beauvais Cathedral, to the Larabanga Mosque, in Ghana, and the National Art Schools, in Cuba. Many endangered sites on previous lists have been rescued or are well on their way to being preserved, thanks to timely intervention. Since 1996, only one site has been lost: Tamba Wari, in Pakistan, which had existed for 900 years, was lost to flooding.

In addition to founding sponsor American Express, major support for the World Monuments Watch has been received from more than twenty-five donors, including the Brown Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Hon. Ronald S. Lauder, the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation, and Robert W. Wilson.

World Monuments Fund
Since its founding in 1965, the World Monuments Fund, headquartered in New York, has achieved an unmatched record of successful conservation in more than eighty countries. In 2003, WMF established WMF Europe, located in Paris, in order to coordinate the work of the organization’s affiliates in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, and to expand its activities in Continental Europe. WMF Britain, located in London, addresses WMF’s agenda in the United Kingdom. Working with these offices and affiliates, as well as with partners around the world, WMF brings together public and private support to implement a comprehensive conservation effort that includes project planning, field surveys, fieldwork, on-site training in the building crafts, advocacy, and the development of long-term strategies for the protection of sites. For additional information about WMF and its programs, the public can visit www.wmf.org.

American Express: Founding Sponsor of the World Monuments Watch
Historic preservation has long been a priority of American Express, which, through its philanthropic program, supports initiatives to strengthen local communities and to nurture and develop tourism’s greatest assets: well-trained people, historic sites and parks, and cultural diversity. Headquartered in New York City, American Express Company (www.americanexpress.com) is a diversified worldwide travel, financial, and network services company founded in 1850.

For additional press information about the World Monuments Fund and the World Monuments Watch program, contact Jeanne Collins & Associates, LLC, New York City, 646-486-7050; info@jcollinsassociates.com.

Source:The World Monuments Fund

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