Photo: Picture Alliance/Christian Kober/Robert Harding
Limestone, the raw material for many iconic monuments and cultural treasures, is facing damage through climate change and air pollution.
Photo credit: Panthera
Beginning along Honduras’s northeastern coastline and stretching south into its dense interior rainforests lies the Río Plátano Biosphere. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, the Río Plátano is one of the most impressive ecosystems on the planet. Rivers swoop in wide arches through the forest, which is home to more than 721 known species of vertebrates, including jaguars, giant anteaters, and great green macaws.
Source: In the Honduran Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an illegal road for cattle and drugs
Photo credit: Conservation News
Tucked away on the Caribbean side of Honduras lies the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an area some in size with abundant green forests, rivers, ponds, and a great variety of wildlife. Because of its natural richness, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared it a World Heritage Site in 1980. The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, which can only be reached by air, sea or river, and is divided into three areas: a buffer zone, a zone, and a cultural zone.
Source: Drugs and agriculture cause deforestation to skyrocket at Honduran UNESCO site
The bird, decimated by poachers and smugglers, is making a big comeback in the Central American rainforest.
Source: How the Stunning Scarlet Macaw Came Back From the Brink
Honduras has committed to protecting part of the tropical rainforests found in the Moskitia region, a move that conservation groups say will protect the region’s rich wildlife, carbon stocks and indigenous groups from recent incursions by ranchers. “The Moskitia is Central America’s second largest rainforest, one of the last wild places in the region, and […]
Source: Honduras aims to save vital wildlife corridor from deforestation
Visit an archeological site of the Mayans and UNESCO World Heritage Site, Copán, on a full-day trip from Guatemala City. Explore the remains of the city and learn the Mayan about its kings and queens who ruled it.
Honduras – Maya Site of Copan
A lost city, UNESCO-recognized ruins, and an eco-archeological park, there is plenty of attractions waiting to be discovered
Newlink Group has banded together with the Honduran Institute of Tourism to promote the distinct beauty and history of Honduras to world-travelers and archaeological buffs alike. Honduras has long been the home to some of the world’s most well-known archeological sites, but with others of legend only recently discovered, the Central American country continues to add to its robust archeology offering. Most recently, the destination debuted a new Archeology Research Center, to bring artifacts from one of the country’s newest archeological sites to the hands of travelers and rounding out a list of attractions that includes Maya sites, museums and endless opportunities for history buffs to delve into its storied past.
With years of speculation and searching, Honduras’ legendary “The Lost City of the Monkey God” was discovered in 2015. Located in the Mosquitia region in eastern Honduras, “Kaha Kamasa,” meaning White City in Misquito dialect, is home to ruins dating between A.D. 1,000 and 1,500.
Read more from source: Honduras’ New Archaeological Research Center Adds to List of Impressive Attractions
Honduras – Maya Site of Copan
Sitting atop the largest pyramid in the world in northern Guatemala’s ancient Mayan city El Mirador, I tried to imagine how the city below looked nearly 2,500 years ago.
Standing nearby, the site’s principal archaeologist, Dr. Richard Hansen, explained how this had been one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, filled with dozens of grand palaces, pyramids and temples painted in vivid red, green, yellow and white hues, and adorned with elaborately carved images. Now mostly covered by forest, the 10-square-mile city also boasted the world’s first “highway system” with hundreds of miles of raised causeways, up to 150 feet wide, sealed with a thick layer of white limestone plaster. I couldn’t help wondering how it was possible for such an advanced civilization to have disappeared so suddenly and completely?
Honduras – Maya Site of Copan
Ancient civilizations comes to life in action-packed expedition of archeological sites in Guatemala and Honduras.
GUATEMALA & HONDURAS—A stone peak pierced through the canopy of tropical rainforest as our helicopter made for the Mexican border. For decades the Guatemalan army used El Mirador as a landmark to identify the northern limits of the country’s airspace, believing it was a small mountain adorning an otherwise featureless landscape.
Little did they know the summit was actually the crown jewel of an ancient Mayan city. Rising up from the jungle floor, El Mirador’s La Danta pyramid is one of the largest man-made structures in the ancient world, rivalling even the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Honduras – Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve
In the first ever global quantitative assessment of how humanity is negatively affecting Natural World Heritage Sites (NWHS), things definitely could’ve looked better. NWHS are globally recognized sites that hold some of the world’s most valuable and beautiful natural assets. Globally there are 1,031 sites that are recognized NWHS and many are at risks because of us humans doing what we can’t seem to stop doing: getting in the way of nature.
A recent study published in the journal of Biological Conservation was led by researchers from the University of Queensland, Wildlife Conservation Society, University of Northern British Columbia and the International Union for Conservation of Nature to assess the human impact on NWHS.
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Aizudin Zainal
IU7. UNL.
All About World Heritage Sites 