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Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

Conservationists must decide whether to put Machu Picchu - Peru's top attraction - on the danger list

Sandra Laville and agencies
Wednesday June 30, 2004
The Guardian

Machu Picchu, the Inca citadel discovered a century ago in the Peruvian Andes, may be placed on the United Nations list of endangered world heritage sites.
After decades of unrestricted tourism, landslides and warnings from scientists that the city could slip off its mountain saddle, UN experts are considering whether to issue the ultimate sanction to the Peruvian government by placing it on their danger list.
The degradation of the city, which was built around 1450, was discussed at a Unesco world heritage conference in China.
The UN has been told that mass tourism is endangering the citadel, which was made a world heritage site in 1983.
"Being placed on the list means there has been such a degradation of the site that the very qualities which make it a world heritage site are being damaged, perhaps irrevocably," a Unesco spokesman said.
"The danger list alerts the international community to the fact that help is needed."
In the century since the US explorer Hiram Bingham rediscovered the lost Inca city in the tropical mountain jungle it has become a magnet for tourists.
More than half a million people visit Machu Picchu each year, trudging at the rate of 1,500 a day over the ruined buildings perched 650 metres up the mountain which gives the city its name.
The management body recently issued new regulations to tourist agencies allowing no more than 500 visitors a day.
But since it is Peru's leading attraction, bringing in $6m (£3.3m) a year, the government has proven resistant to calls for the number of visitors to be restricted.
Last October Francesco Bandarin, the Unesco heritage director, said the unrelenting tourist traffic could severely damage the stone dwellings, agricultural terraces, plazas and temples.
He criticised the unrestricted development nearby in Aguas Calientes, the town where visitors stay before ascending the mountain.
Threatened by economic and commercial forces, the area is also vulnerable to natural disasters, with fires and landslides a constant threat.
Stuart Wittington of Explore Worldwide holidays in the UK, which takes 2,500 hikers to Machu Picchu each year, confirmed that attempts were being made by the management body to restrict the number of visitors.
"It is now much harder to get permits to go to the citadel, you can't just turn up as a backpacker and hike up," he said.
"It is a very rare, precious corner of the earth, it is unique and needs very careful management to enable it to exist for people to see and appreciate in the future."
Luis Lumbreras, director of the Peruvian National Institute of Culture, said in the newspaper El Comercio that if immediate steps were not taken to protect the site it would be in a "more ruinous state" in 10 or 20 years time.
The Unesco spokesman said the decision whether to put the citadel on the endangered list would be made this week.

• The well-preserved city of Machu Picchu sits on a mountain ridge some 2,590 metres (8,500ft) above the Urubamba valley in Peru's southern Andes, about 300 miles south-east of Lima
• It was built around 1460 by the Incan ruler Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui and was inhabited until the Spanish conquest in 1532
• There are around 200 buildings on the site: dwellings, temples and storage structures. The city, most likely a royal estate and religious retreat, would have been populated by between 750 and 1,200 people
• Hiram Bingham, a Yale historian and politician, rediscovered the city in 1911 while exploring old Inca roads. He revisited it several times, carrying out excavations and wrote books and articles about Machu Picchu, including the best-selling Lost City of the Incas. Bingham went on to uncover two more lost cities
• The National Geographic Society publicised Machu Picchu by devoting its April 1913 edition to it. Bingham wrote: "Machu Picchu might prove to be the largest and most important ruin discovered in South America since the days of the Spanish conquest"
• More than 1,500 tourists take the 40-mile Inca trail to the city every day, contributing some £3.3m in entrance tickets to the Peruvian economy annually. Visitor numbers are growing at 6% a year

To ascend – iść w górę, wchodzić
Backpacker – turysta z plecakiem
Citadel – cytadela
conquest – podbój
Dwelling – mieszkanie, domostwo
excavations – wykopaliska
Heritage – dziedzictwo
Hiker – turysta pieszy
Irrevocably – nieodwołalnie
Landslide – osunięcie się ziemi
To perch – przysiąść, przycupnąć
Precious – cenny
ridge – grzbiet (góry)
ruinous state – stan rujnacji
Saddle – siodło
trail – szlak
To trudge – iść z trudem
Unrelenting – uporczywy, bezustanny
Vulnerable – wrażliwy, podatny, narażony


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