Although the world’s greatest travel destinations may seem to endure through the ages, premier tourism sites frequently come and go. Technology, climate change (both natural and man-made), development, wars, disasters and the ever-changing tastes of vacationers constantly cause travel choices to evolve. For all these reasons and more, the following destinations are “endangered,” because they are in danger of losing what makes them so special.
1. Barrow, Alaska
Why travel to the northernmost point in the U.S.? To see the polar bears that occasionally wander 
off their sea-ice homes and amble through the tiny town (pop. 4,500). The Department of the Interior added polar bears to the list of threatened species in 2008 as melting sea ice diminished the bears’ ability to hunt for prey......
2. Mount Kilimanjaro : "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," described in Ernest Hemingway’s 1938 short story of the same name, may soon become history. A 2009 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned that Africa’s highest peak has lost 26 percent of its icecap just since 2000, and 85 percent of the snows that blanketed the mountain in 1912. ...
3. Appalachia : Across the southeastern U.S., mining companies are clear-cutting forests, blowing the tops off mountains to get at the coal within, and dumping the waste into nearby streams. "Mountaintop removal,” as the process is known, has already flattened nearly 500 Appalachian peaks, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.....
4. Great Barrier Reef : If ocean temperatures continue to rise, the world’s largest coral reef could lose much of what makes it so appealing to more than 1,500 species of tropical fish — and to thousands of snorkelers and scuba divers..
5. Venice, Italy : Rising sea levels and compacting soils are causing Italy’s (and perhaps the world’s) most unique city to sink slowly into the water that surrounds it on all sides.....
6. Hawaii : sure, the Aloha State may look like a tropical paradise, but more species are endangered on these islands than in the contiguous 48 states combined. “To the untrained eye, you may think you’re looking at the most beautiful, pristine forest,”.....
7. The Everglades : The so-called "River of Grass" is little more than a stream these days, thanks to encroaching farms, development and irrigation systems that suck up precious water from Lake Okeechobee...
8. Glacier National Park : What will they call this Montana park when the last of its namesake glaciers along the Going-to-the-Sun Road melts away, something the Natural Resources Defense Council says could happen as early as 2030? The park counted 150 glaciers within its boundaries a century ago, and 38 as recently as 1968, but that number has now dwindled to just 26,...
9. Galapagos Island : The Galapagos present a vexing conundrum for the environmental traveler: Should you stay away and avoid contributing to the degradation caused by overtourism, or visit now before they’re ruined?....
10. Chan Chan, Peru : Even intrepid travelers who have trekked the Inca Trail all the way to Machu Picchu may not have heard of this ancient site in northern Peru. The capital of the Chimu civilization that lasted from 850 to 1470, Chan Chan was once the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the largest adobe city on the planet. At that time, rains were so infrequent that the Chimu engineered a sophisticated system of irrigation canals and wells for their drinking water. Some 600 years later, however, frequent El Niño storms have caused devastating erosion, threatening to turn the brick city back into mud.....
11. Manas National Park, India : UNESCO added Manas to its list of World Heritage Sites in Danger in 1992, but a subsequent 15-year insurgency caused India to remove most of the personnel from this national park. That opened the door to logging, illegal agriculture and poaching of endangered species; the Asian one-horned rhino suffered some of the greatest losses during the insurgency. Manas is home to some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Indian elephants, tigers and pygmy hogs, which exist nowhere else on the planet, are just a few of the hundreds of mammals that roam this remote, 200-square-mile area....
12. Galveston, Texas : This barrier island near Houston was Texas' most thriving port in the late 19th century and home to "The Wall Street of the Southwest": a downtown commercial district rich with gorgeous cast-iron architecture. On Sept. 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike buried the city under 13 feet of seawater, threatening the structural integrity of some of its most cherished buildings....
Endangered Destinations - US News and World Report
