World Heritage Sites That Might Not Exist In 10 Years

Publish date: 2024-05-05

Tanzania is seriously big. How big? So big the government has been able to put aside a swathe of land the size of Switzerland as a wildlife reserve. Known as the Selous Game Reserve, this African Switzerland is just like regular Switzerland only instead of Alpine peaks it has low wetlands, and instead of chocolate, it has elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and 12 percent of the continent's wild dogs. (Okay, so it's actually not like Switzerland at all.)

But the Selous Game Reserve is still impressive enough that UNESCO added it to their list in 1982, citing the fact that it's one of Africa's last wilderness areas to be undisturbed by humans. Flash-forward to the present, though, and this slice of untouched land may be about to get not just touched by humans, but kicked, spat on, rolled up in a carpet, and hurled off a bridge. According to Deutsche Welle, the Tanzanian government has approved plans to build a hydroelectric dam and flood huge tracts of the reserve.

Remarkably, this isn't the only way the guys in Dodoma are planning to trash their own heritage. There are simultaneous plans to start logging in Selous, to begin oil and gas extraction, and to open a uranium mine. The Tanzanian government says the projects and the electric created by the dam will shore up the economy. Their detractors say flooding a major tourist destination in a country that relies on tourism will do the exact opposite.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB9k3Jubm5frLyzuMNmn56qmamuqLGMrKCtnaNiwamt02akop%2BYqXqvu9NmnLGho6l6qrqMamdmsZWWv7R7