Great Wall leads new endangered list

NEW YORK, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The World Monuments Fund has issued its biennial list of the most endangered historic, artistic and architectural sites headed by two of mankind's greatest engineering achievements, the rapidly deteriorating Great Wall of China and the increasingly urbanized Panama Canal Zone.

The Fund is the foremost private, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving cultural icons on a global scale, and its Watch List of threatened monuments helps raise funds needed for their rescue and spurs local governments and communities to take an active role. American Express is the founding sponsor of the Watch List program.

The Great Wall was identified by WMF experts as one of the organization's most pressing concerns, even though it is the best-known site on the 2004 list and tops the must-see list of most tourists visiting China.

Its remaining portions are beset by neglect and vandalism, defaced by graffiti, and used as a source of building materials. Reclaimed sections, often inappropriately reconstructed, attract uncontrolled tourism, while other sections are subjected to commercial exploitation, especially by land developers. There has been recent legislation to protect the wall, but only those sections nearest Beijing.

Bonnie Burnham, president of WMF, noted at a press conference announcing the Watch List that for the first time in the eight-year history of the program, the 2004 list encompasses every continent including Antarctica. The endangered site there is explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's 95-year-old hut at Cape Royds, where decaying artifacts need immediate conservation under the aegis of the New Zealand-based Antarctic Heritage Trust. The hut is increasingly visited, resulting in pilferage and damage.

"I think having a list including sites on all seven continents is a reflection of the maturing of the program and its recognition around the world," Burnham said. "Today, we can work virtually anywhere."

The list also includes three sites in Iraq, where looting and vandalism of museums and archaeological sites were widespread earlier this year as a result of the war deposing Saddam Hussein. They are the Nineveh and Nimrud Palaces, where sculptural reliefs need immediate protection from further depredations, and Erbil Citadel, whose outer wall and buildings within need repair and conservation.

Of the 100 sites listed, 22 are carryovers from previous Watch Lists, including 8,000-year-old Erbil, one of the longest continuously inhabited sites in the world. Among the other previous listees that are still in need of conservation are two in Egypt -- the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, site of the Colossi of Memnon, and the oldest mud brick structure in the world at Hierakonpolis, built 4,500 years ago by Pharaoh Khasekhemwy.

Six sites in the United States are on the list including Lower Manhattan where 200 historic and architecturally significant buildings are at risk, either from damages resulting from the World Trade Center attack or demolition to make way for redevelopment. Another major American project is the immediate stabilization of 10 buildings at the North Family Shaker Site in Mount Lebanon, N.Y., including the nation's largest stone barn.

The sites range from whole areas, such as the Panama Canal Zone and Tomo Port Town in Japan, to individual buildings such as historian Horace Walpole's 18th century neo-Gothic residence "Strawberry Hill" in London and the early 19th century Old Lublin Theater in Poland. One of the most unusual is the Dampier Rock Art Complex in Australia where 10,000-year-old petroglyph carvings are being destroyed by an encroaching industrial complex and its petrochemical pollutants.

The Panama Canal Zone was developed between 1882 and 1914 to include planned towns and parks, colonial ruins, and dense tropical jungle, but the original concept is being destroyed by unregulated modern construction and urbanization. The dramatically sited Tomo Port Town in Fukuyama, Japan, is threatened by planned construction of a bridge and major landfill that would alter its traditional waterfront dating to the 17th century.

A Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house structurally damaged by a 1994 earthquake is on the list. It is the 80-year-old Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, constructed of cement blocks containing granite from the site that are crumbling. A trust has been set up to address the house's stabilization and rehabilitation and preservation of the concrete blocks.

The 100 sites were selected by an independent panel of experts from nominations submitted by governments, local and international preservation groups, non-governmental organizations and individuals. Nearly 200 nominations, about half from the previous list, were considered for the 2004 list. The final selections included 18 sites in Africa and the Middle East, 16 in Asia, 33 in Europe, 31 in the Americas, and one each in Australia and Antarctica.

The most recent site on the list is the Helsinki-Malmi Airport in Finland, completed in 1936. Although it is considered a masterpiece of functionalist architecture, the city of Helsinki has proposed its demolition and dispersal of its operations to other airports. Conservationists are campaigning to preserve it as a functional national and international cultural treasure.