World's endangered monuments are listed

NEW YORK, June 11 (UPI) -- The 2008 list of the 100 most endangered world monuments has been released by the World Monument Fund.

Bonnie Burnham, president of the non-profit organization, said the list highlights three critical man-made threats: political conflict, unchecked urban and industrial development, and, for the first time, global climate change.

Announced every two years, the WMF Watch List is designed to draw international public attention to threatened cultural heritage sites across the globe. The list is assembled by an international panel of experts in archaeology, architecture, art history, and preservation.

Burnham said the latest list shows human activity has become the greatest threat to the world's cultural heritage, causing irreparable harm to such places as Herschel Island, Canada, home to ancient Inuit sites and a historic whaling town that's being lost to the rising sea and melting permafrost, and Leh Old Town in Ladakh, India, a rare intact medieval city in the Himalayan region facing weather patterns it wasn't built to withstand.

More information about the sites is available at www.wmf.org.