The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has registered the Bale Mountains National Park located in Oromia region.
Bale Mountains National Park has been registered as one of the world’s natural heritages today at the 45th extended session of the World Heritage Committee being underway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
UNESCO inscribed Bale Mountains National Park as Ethiopia’s second natural heritage and 11th in the world.
The Bale Mountains National Park, founded in 1962, is located in the Oromia National Regional State 400 km from the capital in southeastern Ethiopia.
The site is also home to National Park Lakes created in various ways containing wetlands and volcanic remains with spectacular landscape making it one of the ideal tourist destinations.
The park is endowed with several species of plants, mammals, and birds, among which many are endemic to the park.
It is to be recalled that the Gedeo Cultural Landscape has been registered on Sunday as world heritages at the 45th extended session of the World Heritage Committee.
The Gedeo Cultural Landscape lies along the eastern edge of the Main Ethiopian Rift, on the steep escarpments of the Ethiopian highlands.
An area of agroforestry, it utilizes multilayer cultivation with large trees sheltering indigenous enset, the main food crop, under which grow coffee and other shrubs.
Within the cultivated mountain slopes are sacred forests traditionally used by local communities for rituals associated with the Gedeo religion, and along the mountain ridges are dense clusters of megalithic monuments, which came to be revered by the Gedeo and cared for by their elders.
The registration of the two sites as world heritages by UNESCO is expected to help strengthen Ethiopia’s tourism development in addition to appropriately protect the heritages.
Source: Ethiopian News Agency