The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has recommended that Peru’s government take measures to control the number of tourists that visit the country’s sacred Inca citadel, Machu Picchu, RPP radio station reported.
During its 34th session currently being held in Brasilia, the committee considered including Machu Picchu on the List of World Heritage in Danger, but in the end decided to only send a recommendation to Peru’s government.
The committee recognized the government’s efforts to control the flow of tourists to the Inca site, which sits perched on a mountain top some 2,430 meters above sea-level in southern Peru’s Cuzco region.
Machu Picchu is Peru’s top tourist site, attracting more than 850,000 tourists in 2008 and an important source of revenue for the country’s tourism sector. It was included as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger includes 34 sites around the world including the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, the archaeological remains of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan valley and Peru’s Chan Chan site, the former capital of the Chimu Kingdom.
Chan Chan was included on the list in 1986, the same year it became a World Heritage Site, because “its adobe, or earthen, structures are quickly damaged by natural erosion as they become exposed to air and rain.”
The UNESCO committee recently decided to include the Rainforests of the Atisnanana in Madagascar and Everglades National Park in the United States.
They also agreed to remove Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands from the list during their meeting in Brasilia.
