Indonesia's Government Urges Support of Komodo for World Wonder Online Campaign

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

The Jakarta Globe 

With the Komodo National Park a finalist to become one of the new seven wonders of nature, the government is urging the country to support its bid before voting closes in 2011.

“We’ve reached the final stage now, although on the list we’re in fifth place, sometimes sixth,” said Masyhud, a spokesman from the Ministry of Forestry, on Tuesday. “But it can change anytime until 2011, so it is a very dynamic vote.”

Organized by the Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation to help preserve the world’s heritage sites, the Komodo National Park has been nominated to become a natural wonder alongside 27 other places around the world, including the Amazon rainforest, Great Barrier Reef and Grand Canyon.

People can vote for the seven final wonders on the campaign’s Web site at www.vote7.com/n7w or by telephone. The winners will be announced in 2011.

Other wonders nominated include Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Halong Bay in Vietnam, the Black Forest in Germany and Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands.

On July 7, 77 nominees were selected in the preliminary stage from a popular vote by people from around the world.

Twenty-eight finalists were then selected by an expert team led by a former director general of the United Nation’s culture and heritage agency, Unesco.

The Komodo National Park managed to secure a place among the 28 finalists and is now eligible to be voted for in the final seven natural wonders of the world.

“In order to win this, we want people to vote Komodo as the first option and the latter options should be finalists with slim chances of winning,” Masyhud said, adding that Lake Toba in North Sumatra had also made it into the nominee stage of the competition but missed out on the final round of 28 sites.

Masyhud said Indonesia’s biggest rivals would be the Amazon rainforest, Germany’s Black Forest, the El Yungue National Forest in Puerto Rico, the Puerto Princesa Underground River in the Philippines and the Sunderbans Delta, the world’s largest mangrove forest at the mouth of the Ganges River, which is spread across India and Bangladesh.

In a 2007 contest by the New7Wonders Foundation to decide the seven man-made wonders of the world, the Buddhist Borobudur temple in Yogyakarta was passed over due to a lack of votes.

The Komodo National Park, which is located in East Nusa Tenggara and encompasses the three main islands of Komodo, Rinca and Padar, was established in 1980 to protect and preserve the population and habitat of the unique Komodo dragons native to the area.

There are currently about 2,500 Komodo dragons on Komodo and Rinca islands between Sumbawa and Flores.(Jakarta Globe)