UNESCO has warned that a coral reef in Belize and a national park in Colombia may soon disappear from its World Heritage List.

The Belize Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the Northern Hemisphere. It is, according to the World Heritage committee, suffering badly from excessive construction work, as well the destruction of the mangrove swamps, along the coast of the Central American country. The reef was added to the World Heritage List in 1996.

The Los Katios National Park in Colombia is also threatened, says the committee, by deforestation and illegal hunting and fishing. It was added to the list in 1994 because of its rich biodiversity.

The World Heritage committee is currently meeting in the Spanish city of Seville to consider additions to, and removals from, the list of world locations it considers to be of cultural or physical significance.

It has already decided to remove the Elbe valley near the German city of Dresden from the list following the building of a large bridge across the river.

Two European locations have been added to the list: the Wadden Sea, that runs along the North Sea coast from the Netherlands to Denmark, and the Dolomites, a section of the Alps, in Italy.

Photo by Chuck Taylor (flickr)