Govt to select candidate for World Natural Heritage

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Environment Ministry and the Forestry Agency have decided to jointly establish an academic study panel this spring to select a candidate site for Japan's sixth UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site.

According to sources, the panel will likely examine more than 10 possible locations, including the Akan, Kussharo and Mashu area in Hokkaido, the Southern Japanese Alps that stretches across Nagano, Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures, and Mt. Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture.

Currently, four Japanese sites are included as World Natural Heritage Sites in the World Heritage List. In 1993, the Shirakami-Sanchi mountain range, which extends across Aomori and Akita prefectures, and Yakushima island in Kagoshima Prefecture were added to the list, followed by Hokkaido's Shiretoko [Peninsula] in 2005 and Tokyo's Ogasawara Islands in 2011.

The Amami and Ryukyu island chains, which span across Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures, have already been selected as a fifth candidate.

Similar panels have been set up in the past to provide academic opinions regarding World Natural Heritage Site applications.

This will be the first time in nine years that a new panel will be established to deliberate on potential locations for the sixth and subsequent candidate sites.

The previous panel rejected 16 of 19 proposed sites. In regard to one rejected site, Lake Akan in Hokkaido, a study later revealed that "marimo," a round spherical moss growing in the lake, is the oldest of its kind, and some of it has been found in bird droppings in foreign countries as far away as Iceland.

The Southern Japanese Alps in central Honshu is considered to be a strong potential candidate due to progress on a geographical survey regarding the Fossa Magna, a great fault line which runs from northern to southern Honshu.