Anza-Borrego Aims for World Heritage Designation & the Work Begins By Dave Van Cleve
No. 84 Winter 2016
For over 40 years, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been designating natural and cultural locations throughout the world as World Heritage sites. Roughly 1,000 places have been approved as World Heritage sites, only 23 of which are located in the United States. Two are in California: Yosemite National Park and Redwood National and State Parks. None of the sites in the United States consists of a large desert ecosystem like we have here in Anza-Borrego. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and Anza-Borrego Foundation have jointly agreed to support the nomination of the Park to the list of inscribed sites for World Heritage. In this case, “support” actually means to build the scientific case for the Park’s nomination, to write the nomination (these are often in the 250–300 page range), and to develop a framework of agencies, elected officials, academic institutions, individuals and nonprofit organizations to rally around this nomination. I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with the staff of the National Park Service that manages the World Heritage program in the U.S. They review the nominations for properties in the U.S. and forward the most viable to the World Heritage Congress for consideration. They were very encouraging of our efforts. Obviously, with only 23 inscribed sites in this country, there is a very high bar for success here. The next step for the Park is to prepare the nomination and apply to be on the “tentative list” for the United States. I’ll describe our plan of approach in more detail in a moment, but let’s first take a look at what it takes to gain World Heritage status. The most important criterion for World Heritage status is what UNESCO calls “Outstanding Universal Value.” In other words, each site must possess exceptional qualities, either natural or cultural (or a mix). Yosemite and the Redwoods parks clearly possess outstanding natural values that appeal to a universal audience. On the cultural side, Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and Mesa Verde National Park are existing sites in the U.S. that have outstanding historical, anthropological or archeological values. Worldwide, there are four times as many cultural sites as there are natural sites. The fact that Anza-Borrego’s justification is based on natural, cultural and paleontological bases will help make its candidacy a strong one. continued on page 3