Decision 17 BUR VIII.2

Everglades National Park (United States of America)

The Bureau recalled that the Committee, at its last session, was informed of the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew which affected extensive areas of this World Heritage site on 24 August 1992. The Bureau noted that the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew has had a wide range of impacts on the ecology of Everglades and that the site has been entered on the "Montreux Record", the equivalent of a 'danger list' under the Ramsar Convention. The Representative of IUCN informed the Bureau that conservation problems of the Everglades have been covered extensively in the literature and that a monitoring report on Everglades submitted at the Ramsar Conference in Japan, from 9 to 16 June 1993, could be treated as the starting point for preparing a state of conservation report on Everglades for the forthcoming session of the Committee. The Bureau recognized that due to the number of agencies at various levels of government which are concerned with the conservation of Everglades, a state of conservation report on this World Heritage site may consider its inclusion in the List of World Heritage in Danger as one of its recommendations. The Bureau requested IUCN to prepare a state of conservation report on Everglades for submission to the seventeenth session of the Committee and noted that a supplementary allocation to lower costs was requested by IUCN. The Delegate of the United States of America supported the preparation of such a report, since it would bring an international and global dimension to the conservation of Everglades and assured his Government's assistance for the preparation of the report.