World Conservation Union boosts Teide bid
Mount Teide and its surrounding national park, the crowning glory of Tenerife, is among 37 natural and cultural sites across the globe competing for World Heritage Site status.
If the Teide bid is successful then tiny Tenerife will have two World Heritage Sites after its former colonial capital La Laguna was favoured by the UN as “the first non-fortified Spanish colonial town”. San Cristobal de La Laguna, to give it its full name, became the model for many colonial towns in the Americas.
Teide’s bid has been significantly bolstered by an endorsement from the World Conservation Union (IUCN), an official advisory body to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
UNESCO will choose the locations it wishes to grant favoured heritage status to during its annual meeting currently taking place in Christchurch, New Zealand.
A decision is expected on July 2.
The IUCN recommendation declares Teide National Park to be a “mature, slow-moving and geologically complex volcanic system”.
Teide, at 12,195ft, is the third highest volcano in the world. It is one of 16 decade volcanoes worldwide considered by volcanologists to be worthy of in-depth study because of their history of large and destructive eruptions and their proximity to heavily populated areas.
Considered dormant at the moment, Teide last erupted less than a hundred years ago.
At just 75 square miles, the national park is relatively small. Nonetheless, it is the most visited in Europe and is home to 220 species of plants of which 73 are endemic to the Canarian archipelago and 16 unique to the park.
It’s a testimony to nature’s ability to adapt that anything survives at such an altitude and in the face of extremes of temperature and weather, ranging from hot and dry to gale-force winds, snow and ice – sometimes all on the same day!