Border Protection Command yesterday confirmed the failure as the island received another boat carrying 116 asylum-seekers and five crew -- the largest arrival since Julia Gillard's Malaysia Solution was killed off by the High Court in August.

HMAS Maitland intercepted the latest boat about 15 nautical miles offshore after someone aboard called 000. The RAAF found the boat but it was not in imminent danger and a decision was made to monitor it as it approached the island.

A Border Protection Command spokeswoman said multiple radars were in use on Sunday when the earlier boat of 78 asylum-seekers approached the island undetected. Radar was in use in the vicinity during the period over which the vessel arrived but did not identify or locate it, she said.

Border Protection Command learned of Sunday's boat at about 5.30pm (9.30pm AEDT) after an asylum-seeker claiming to be on board called 000. In a night search co-ordinated by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the island's Volunteer Marine Rescue found the boat adrift without power and being pushed towards jagged cliffs in the swell.

HMAS Maitland arrived about 20 minutes later and loaded some of the asylum-seekers onto rubber boats. The rest stayed on board the 20m wooden boat and the volunteers used their 7.3m rescue vessel to tow them into Flying Fish Cove.

The failure of radar to alert authorities to boats has become a topic of debate since the SIEV 221 tragedy on December 15 last year in which 50 people died after huge swells smashed their boat onto the island's rocky cliffs.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new owner has bought part of the Belle Island property in Pigeon Forge and is planning an attraction whose centerpiece will be a 200-foot skywheel. On Monday, LeConte Village LLC paid $10 million for the retail portion of Belle Island, an unfinished project near the Parkway that includes a steamboat-shaped museum shell and has been dormant since Regions Bank took the property at a foreclosure sale in 2009.

Darby Campbell, the Knoxville-based developer who has partnered with Bob McManus to spearhead the deal, said several potential tenants are looking at the project and predicted the eventual tenants would invest around $75 million.

Campbell said his group plans to demolish the steamboat building, which at one time was expected to house the Hollywood memorabilia collection of actress Debbie Reynolds. Campbell said his group paid cash for the site, and expects to invest another $13 million in improvements, not counting the skywheel. He said the $13 million includes $5 million that will be provided by the city of Pigeon Forge for infrastructure improvements, including a road connecting the Parkway, and a planned $45 million event center that also will be developed by Campbell and McManus.

Campbell estimated the island attraction will open in the spring of 2013. "The concept now would be mainly entertainment and restaurants and the hotel and things of that nature, with some retail infill," he said. "The main draw, I would say, would be entertainment."

Campbell said the skywheel will be the tallest structure in Pigeon Forge and will include cars that are heated and air-conditioned. The purchase does not include a partially completed hotel on the island, but Campbell said his group has that property under contract.

The developer estimated that three years ago the land his group just purchased would have appraised for $12 million, not including the 250,000 square feet of buildings on the site that he estimated are 85 percent complete. Regions submitted a credit bid of $23.9 million in acquiring the property at a foreclosure sale in August of 2009.

Campbell acknowledged concerns about the economy, but said that was why he and McManus put together a group that paid cash for the site. "If the economy were to take a turn for the worse, we could just sit and wait," he said. The Campbell group's plan to buy the property was announced in February, but the deal took months to finalize. The developer said it was one of the more complicated deals he has worked on.

"Once (Regions) realized that we were one of the few (buyers) that could pull it off and could afford to, that was when we came together," he said. Belle Island is between the Parkway and Teaster Lane and at one time was to include a NASCAR-themed attraction called the Darrell Waltrip Racing Experience, a hotel, and retail stores in addition to the Debbie Reynolds museum. Much of the construction for Belle Island was completed but a firm behind the project filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Reynolds has since begun auctioning portions of her collection. According to the Los Angeles Times, the famous subway dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch" was sold in June for $5.52 million, including fees.

Read the rest of this entry »

It's official, well almost; the world has seven new natural wonders. Zurich-based New7Wonders Foundation was established in 2001 to help protect the world's natural and human-built heritage. Its search for the world's new natural wonders began in 2007 and was decided by the votes of millions of people worldwide via website new7wonders.

Results of the first count of the global vote were announced last week. The winners are provisional until the votes are checked, validated and independently verified and when scrutiny is completed early next year, the official inauguration events will begin.

The winners are: Brazil's Amazon region; Cape Town's Table Mountain; Iguazu Falls in Argentina; Halong Bay, Vietnam; the Puerto Princesa Underground River on Palawan in the Philippines; Indonesia's Komodo National Park; and Jeju Island.

Most are familiar names but where on Earth is Jeju Island? About 64km off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, less than two hours by plane from Seoul, Jeju is South Korea's largest island.

Spectacular volcanic scenery, waterfalls, mountains, forests, caves, superb beaches and milder weather have made Jeju a favoured destination for Korean honeymooners and tourists from China and Japan.

In 2002, the entire island was designated a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO and it was listed as a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site in 2007. Nine geological sites were also awarded UNESCO Global Geopark status in October last year, making Jeju the only place in the world to receive all three UNESCO honours.

The dazzling Geopark sites include Hallasan, Korea's highest mountain, the Manjanggul Lava Tubes, Jusangjeolli sea cliffs, Cheonjiyeon waterfall and Seongsan Ilchulbong, a 182m-high volcanic tuff cone rising dramatically out of the sea.

Now the Jeju regional administration is planning a major upgrade of its international airport in anticipation of an influx of visitors from beyond East Asia. So what are the newcomers likely to find?

They'll discover a playground of idyllic sandy beaches, hiking trails, jaw-dropping scenery and sensational seafood in an almost subtropical climate responsible for an abundance of palm trees, pineapples and tangerines.

Add dozens of eclectic museums, folk villages, theme parks, a racecourse, casinos, golf courses and luxury resort hotels and you begin to get the picture.

Scattered around the island are countless Tolharubang, ancient stone grandfather figures said to be phallic fertility symbols and popular backdrops for honeymooner happy snaps.The grandmother figures are another story; they're leathery skinned, short and rounded, mostly over 70 and as fit as fish.

They need to be because these grannies spend half their lives free-diving the deep waters offshore, groping for shellfish, sea urchins, octopus and seaweed and the only breathing apparatus is their ageing lungs. The Haenyo have been at it for centuries but they're a dying breed. As recently as the 1950s there were more than 30,000 working Jeju's shoreline.

Fewer than 6000 remain, half of them more than 60 years old, and you can still meet them on the beaches and rock pools, working mainly on the south coast around Seongsan Beach.

Jeju is also home to some of South Korea's weirdest tourist attractions. Glass Castle is a large theme park full of glass art produced by artists from Italy, the Czech Republic and Japan.

Inside, exhibits include a large beanstalk from the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale, glass books, glass bean sprouts and a mirror room like a fantasy universe with constellations made from 5000 pieces of Pyrex.

Outside you'll find glass fish made from recycled soju (Korean liquor) bottles, thousands of convex mirrors, a large glass coffee set floating on a mirror lake, a glass pyramid and multi-coloured glass flowers.

There are countless idiosyncratic museums, such as the World Eros Museum, the Trick Art Museum, a Sex and Health Museum, a Chocolate Museum and an impressive Africa Museum housed in a life-sized replica of Mali's Mosque of Djenne.

At the main Teddy Bear Museum (there are two) you can marvel at dioramas in which cuddly teddies depict such signal historic events as the wedding of Charles and Diana, Neil Armstrong's moon landing, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and helmeted bear soldiers landing on Normandy beaches.

But in conservative South Korea, perhaps the strangest phenomenon is Loveland. Presumably aimed at honeymooners, racy Loveland is the country's only sex-themed amusement park with sex-education films and an X-rated erotic art garden of 140 sculptures representing humans in various sexual positions created by 20 artists from the prestigious Hongik University in Seoul.

Despite the chic resorts and bizarre theme parks, outside the main tourist towns Jeju is a place of haunting natural beauty. There are some 20 marked walking paths called Olle Trails (three to six-hour walks) that will lead you past tangerine orchards, golden canola fields, neighbourhood backyards and from the waterfalls, mountain forests and national parks to drop-dead gorgeous seaside cliffs and beaches that have earned Jeju its latest gong.

While scrutineers double-check the vote count, Jeju locals are in no doubt that on January 1 their special island will be validated, verified and announced as one of the world's New7Wonders.

Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike some of her neighbors, Toyya Robinson didn’t have to be rescued Friday morning from the rooftop of her burning apartment building in Blue Island. But that doesn’t mean that escaping the blaze wasn’t a harrowing experience.

Robinson, 22, woke up early in the morning smelling smoke. She rolled out of bed, walked to her front door and peeked outside. “I saw smoke and heard people screaming and running outside,” Robinson said several hours later.

By then, Robinson, her boyfriend Quinton Collier and their two young children had been forced to relocate to an apartment across the street. The fire had destroyed their apartment in the two-story, 36-unit complex. All told, more than 20 residents were displaced. The fire was caused by unattended cooking and destroyed the building’s roof, fire officials said.

“I’m still completely shocked,” Collier said, surveying the remains of his charred apartment. “I was here prior to the incident, on the couch with the kids, watching TV. I come back from work and I see this.”

One person was injured in the blaze but was treated and released, according to Blue Island Fire Chief Bob Kopp, who said the fire in the 12100 block of Vincennes Road started at about 4:15 a.m.

Most residents were out of the complex when fire crews arrived, but some were rescued from the roof, Kopp said. Others were awakened and escorted out by firefighters.

Firefighters were forced to fight the blaze in a defensive mode, rescuing people from the roof and then battling a huge fire in the attic. The fire originated in a second-floor apartment kitchen, where someone apparently left a stove turn on and unattended, Kopp said.

The fire burned most of the second floor and went into the attic and took the roof off, Kopp said. All of the second-floor units and some on the first floor were damaged, he said, and it took firefighters about 11/2 hours to put the fire out.

The owner had just bought the building a week ago and is in the process of rehabbing several buildings on Vincennes Road, Kopp said. American Red Cross of Greater Chicago spokesman Gerry Holmes said 14 apartments and 25 to 30 people were affected by the fire, and the Red Cross provided food, clothing and medication to the families of 14 units.

Kopp said 17 neighboring fire departments assisted. Danielle Hanson, Blue Station Apartments assistant property manager, said all the residents who were displaced moved to newly refurbished apartments in a complex across the street that the business owns. She said the apartments that burned down were “bad-looking units” with old appliances, and that the apartments the tenants moved into were “10 times better.”

Read the rest of this entry »

A cascade of golden balloons and a 1,002-voice rendition of the Helen Reddy anthem, “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar,” marked the 50th anniversary of the Women of Achievement luncheon, the annual awards banquet sponsored by the Staten Island Advance.

Merriment and celebration are always on the menu, but this year’s honorees included women who perform good works that are a matter of life and death. Their presence and stories brought emotional jolts to the presentation.

Gasps accompanied the description of Elissa Montanti’s work. She has been rescuing grievously maimed children from war zones and natural disasters around the world — 150 in all — since 1996. She brings them to Staten Island — she is adept at getting airlines to forgo the fare — and sees to it that they get the medical procedures, surgery and prosthetic limbs they require.

Accompanying her to the luncheon were some of the children she has helped, including Kenan Malkic, now 29. He was a teen-ager when he lost a leg and both arms in Bosnia. The other honorees devote themselves to Island children, neglected cemeteries and desperate animals. Christina Chukalas has worked on behalf of Island Girl Scouts. Betty Harty is a Boy Scout activist. Lynn A. Rogers restores abandoned cemeteries, and Elizabeth Rooney is a champion of unwanted pets. She has found homes for some 5,000 discarded animals.

5 DECADES, 286 HONOREES
They joined some exalted company yesterday. Some 286 women with a comparable sense of duty and compassion have been named Women of Achievement in the past 50 years. Advance Publisher Caroline Diamond Harrison recalled that her late father, Richard E. Diamond, called the award “the single most prestigious honor any Staten Islander can receive.” He founded the program and presided over the first luncheon in 1962.

That year, the celebrity guest speaker was etiquette columnist (and former Advance staffer) Amy Vanderbilt, a descendant of a prominent Island family. This year’s speaker, cardiologist and television host Dr. Mehmet Oz, also has Island ties. His wife, the former Lisa Lemole, grew up on the Island. Her family owned a pharmacy in New Dorp.

The luncheon, which filled the ballroom at the Hilton Garden Inn, always draws elected officials. They were particularly numerous yesterday. Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced Dr. Oz, noting that the doctor had chided him earlier for salting a buttered roll before devouring it. The mayor recalled seeing Alice Diamond, widow of Richard E. Diamond and mother of Caroline Harrison, earlier this month at Lincoln Center, where he presented her with the Mayor’s Award for Art and Culture. Mrs. Diamond was a presenter herself today, congratulating honorees as they received the Tiffany silver bowls that commemorate their selection as Women of Achievement. Borough President James Molinaro saluted the awards program “for finding people who are so deserving.”

Island women who currently hold elected office were acknowledged effusively by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. All three officials have her cell phone number and use it regularly, she said. “All of them have made history,” she added, noting that Councilwoman Debi Rose is the first African-American elected on the Island; state Sen. Diane Savino is the first female senator, and state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis is the first Hispanic.

The assemblywoman is the daughter of a Cuban mother and a Greek father. In the kind of connection that is still relatively common in the borough, Malliotakis is well-acquainted with 2011 awardee Christina Chukalas, through their parish, Holy Trinity-St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Bulls Head. Speaker Quinn, who hasn’t yet confirmed her intention to succeed Mayor Bloomberg, also acknowledged the trailblazing female officials of the past: the late Assemblywoman Elizabeth Connelly, City Councilwoman Mary Codd and U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari.

The speaker, the first woman to have that title, reiterated the straight-up truth about the borough’s health statistics. Parts of the Island have some of the highest smoking and obesity rates in the city, she noted, and “these indicators are not something to be proud of.”

STERN MESSAGE FROM THE DOCTOR
Dr. Oz, naturally, acknowledged these issues, narrating video clips that promote his agenda of preventive measures: Don’t smoke; get 30 minutes of exercise a day, keep tabs on your stress level and, find a diet you can love and stick to it.

The size of the waistline — ideally, half of one’s height — is crucial, he said. Advance editor Brian Laline, who had presented the 2011 Women of Achievement, allowed the doctor to take his measure. It proved to be a little above the ideal.

Given Dr. Oz’s ideas about diet, lunch was healthier than most big-room meals, and most of the attendees seemed to like it. There was spinach flan, quinoa and cranberries, salad in a whole-wheat cup, and a lightweight pumpkin tart for dessert.

Today's attendance figure of just over 1,000 was a little shy of the 1,100 figure reached in 2004. At least three women at today's luncheon, Lillian Popp (a 1994 inductee); former Advance food editor Jane Milza and Edith Susskind (1987) attended the first one, in 1962. Just as people were finishing dessert, a delegation of theater students from Wagner College materialized to lead the singing of the 1972 Helen Reddy hit. The audience needed little prompting and everyone seemed to know all of the words. Someone pulled a switch after that and confetti and hundreds of gold balloons that had been massed overhead floated into the picture. 

Read the rest of this entry »

A big fire blazed through Fire Island Pines of New York’s Long Island on Monday night and needed 400 firefighters from 28 fire departments to be subdued. So far, no injuries were reported. The fire ruined a two-building entertainment complex and the popular Pavilion nightclub. Inside the complex, the shops, bars and offices were completely gutted and indistinguishable piles of black ash were left on the walls.

The blaze caused propane tanks raining down around the community, destroyed a house across the harbor, and left the residents watching from their windows and the dock shocked.

According to Joseph Geiman, the Fire Department Commissioner of Fire Island Pines, the fire appeared to start about 9 p.m. Monday in an alley near a propane sales facility. The blaze spread, causing the propane tanks to explode.

"The whole roof was just one ball of flame. I was up on my roof deck, and I saw a little bit of flame from the back of the buildings. Fifteen minutes later, the whole thing was engulfed,” resident Wayne Heyser told the Newsday.Brookhaven Town Supervisor Mark Lesko said the officials have not found out how the fire started and it was too early to estimate the total amount of the damage.

It is clear that The Pavilion dance club, a place popular among gay was completely destroyed. Several investors include Andrew Kirtzman, a former NY1 and WCBS-TV newscaster and author bought the Pavilion nightclub for $17 million in 2010. They control 80 percent of the Pines’ commercial properties.

The adjacent LaFountaine building, containing the Sip & Twirl dance club, two real estate offices, a pizza parlor, and a clothing shop, was ruined.

“The air in the harbor is still thick with smoke, but the fire has not spread anywhere else, thanks to the incredible work of the Pines Fire Department and the departments that raced to its aid," Kirtzman said.

"We will help one another get the commercial district ready for summer 2012 and begin the process of renewing this beautiful property and making it even more spectacular than it was before,” Kirtzman wrote on his Facebook page. Now fire department and police officials are trying to determine the exact cause of the explosive fire.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Solomon Islands Wednesday elected Gordon Darcy Lilo as prime minister of the Pacific Island nation, just days after he was sacked as finance minister, a government spokesman said. Lilo, who was chosen by all sitting MPs, replaces Danny Philip who resigned on Friday after lawmakers deserted his government, leaving him without a majority in the 50-seat parliament. "He got 29 (votes)," government spokesman David Tuhanuku said of Lilo. "It was done in a secret ballot within the chamber of parliament," he told AFP via telephone from the capital Honiara.

The Solomon Star newspaper said the vote took more than an hour, with Lilo eventually emerging with Governor-General Sir Frank Kabui, who declared him to have won the leadership. Lilo, who becomes his country's 15th prime minister since the Solomons gained independence from Britain in 1978, is one of two cabinet members Philip unexpectedly sacked last week. That move prompted other MPs to desert Philip's government and forced the change of leader for the nation of some 550,000 people.

Philip was facing allegations of misallocation of funds. The Solomons has previously erupted in violence for political reasons, with parts of Honiara hit by arson and rioting following a 2006 election, but there were no reports of unrest Wednesday. The country is the second Pacific nation to experience political upheaval with Nauru getting its third leader in a week on Tuesday after one quit amid corruption claims and his successor was dumped in a no confidence vote.

Read the rest of this entry »

Plans for Olympic corporate guests to enjoy hospitality from a gigantic sofa while watching the UK's biggest TV have enraged homeowners who live just metres away.

Outline planning permission has been granted for a temporary venue capable of hosting up to 8,000 visitors a day on Fish Island, a small former industrial area in Stratford which is home to 600 people and 120 businesses.

The scheme has been devised by Lance Forman, a former accountant and owner of a smoked salmon factory which relocated to Fish Island following the decision to construct the Olympic Park on its former premises. Although Forman is already running a restaurant and event venue next to his factory, he plans to use an empty 20,000 square metre space adjacent to the factory to create an "experiential, hospitality and entertainment" venue with a press and media centre and TV studios above.

The venue, which will open from 8am to 2am the following morning from April to September 2012, will take the form of a giant living room. Forman said it would be an "iconic" image of the Olympics that could help "put Fish Island on the map and help the area regenerate post-Games".

The temporary structure could be packed up after the Games and reused. "The living room floor is 6m off the ground and underneath you have 5,500 metres of hospitality space," Forman said. "The sofa itself is the equivalent of a four-storey building with hospitality space. The cabinet that the giant TV sits on could become a nightclub for 1,000 people or 1,500 people."

Forman envisages the planned screen, which will measure 30 metres by 17 metres, being used for live action as well as video games and to display Twitter feeds.

But he said the plans were far from being final: "The planning permission we have is for a concept scheme. The details have not been worked out yet and we don't know what the final design will be, at this stage. Our vision is to build something creative and iconic."

However, objectors to the scheme believe the development will bring gridlock to the roads and constant disturbance, pointing out that Forman's Living Room will be the second hospitality venue located on the island. Permission has already been granted for another scheme hosting 4,000 people a day.

Objections lodged

Fish Island comprises a few narrow lanes enclosed by the A12 and the river Lea navigation (a canalised river). The island can only be accessed by one road, and planning officers for the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, which this week granted the initial go ahead for the scheme, warned that access to the site is poor by all means of transportation, both public and private.

One protestor at a planning meeting described the decision as madness and "a disaster waiting to happen: 12,500 people on a tiny little island".

Michael Roberts, who owns a scrap metal yard on the island, said access to his yards will be blocked by the shuttlebus, coach and pre-booked taxi points, part of which are planned to run along a length of road where parking is not normally allowed.

Frank and Pam Henson, who with their daughter live directly opposite the Forman's site in Lock Keepers' Cottage, former location for Channel 4 programme The Big Breakfast, have already lived through construction of the Olympic stadium "virtually in our back garden without unduly disturbing us".

But the noise generated by an event staged recently on Forman's site leaves them in fear of the planned development: "Only a month ago [Forman] rented out his open yard to Coca Cola for an advertising shoot involving 1,000 extras, plus cast, with a sound system so loud it caused nausea and set off car alarms in nearby Dace Road," Henson said.

"The key thing is that this seems to be an open venue from the indicative drawings. Music sound can be reduced with limiters, but thousands of revellers' voices cannot."

The local authority, Tower Hamlets, objected to the proposal, expressing concern at the potential impact on residents and the capacity of the surrounding transport networks to cope with the proposed numbers.

Forman said his initiative was only opposed by a small number of nearby residents and that any inconvenience would be outweighed by benefits for the area. "There is very much a feeling among local people that east London really hasn't benefited from the Olympics. It would be a real brownie point if a sponsor came and did something for local people," he said.

"We have to meet all the noise regulations and environmental regulations to get a licence. There was a misunderstanding among some of the residents that we were building a nightclub for 8,000 people. That's not what we're doing, we're building a corporate hospitality facility for that number of people throughout the day. It sounds a lot, but spread through the entire day and in the context of 500,000 coming to the area for the Games [it's not]."

Final details of the scheme will be subject to further planning meetings, but Forman insisted there was time to build the ambitious structure. "We've been advised it will take four months. The main issue with the timing is that there is a certain amount of kit around to build these structures and if we don't book it, it will have to be fabricated and that adds to the timeline and the cost."

He added: "At an event for Olympic sponsors, addressed by Lord Mawson, he talked about how they should be encouraged to put more into this area now, during and post-Games to help the legacy of the Olympics and the regeneration of east London, so that east Londoners don't just see them coming in for the two-week party and disappearing. "This is what all this is about – building a lasting legacy for the area."

Read the rest of this entry »

A global competition has named its "provisional" New 7 Wonders of Nature, but no Canadian sites have made the list.

The New 7 Wonders of Nature are: South America's Amazon rainforest.
Vietnam's Halong Bay.
Argentina's Iguazu Falls.
South Korea's Jeju Island.
Indonesia's Komodo national park.
The Philippines' Puerto Princesa Underground River.
South Africa's Table Mountain.
New Seven Wonder of Nature organizers said it's possible there will be changes between the provisional winners and the eventually confirmed winners after voting is verified. A final announcement will be made in early 2012.

The Bay of Fundy — located between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — was the only Canadian finalist on the first short list of 28. But the home of the highest tides in the world didn't make the top 14 finalists in a global competition that featured frenzied lobbying and online voting.

The new seven wonders initiative is the brainchild of Swiss-Canadian adventurer and filmmaker Bernard Weber. The competition attracted the attention of Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, who said winning would have turned the bay into a tourism gold mine.

Read the rest of this entry »

Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi's Bu Tinah Island, which competed to become one of the New 7 Wonders of the nature in a global poll had to be contented as one of the 14 top finalists. Bu Tinah was the only finalist representing the Gulf region among 28 finalists in total, from an original 447 sites from around the world.

The Amazon rainforest, Vietnam's Halong Bay and Argentina's Iguazu Falls were named among the world's new seven wonders of nature, according to organisers of a global poll. The other four crowned the world's natural wonders are South Korea's Jeju Island, Indonesia's Komodo, the Philippines' Puerto Princesa Underground River and South Africa's Table Mountain, said the New7Wonders foundation, citing provisional results.

The New7Wonders Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland, the organiser of the global vote, explained in a statement posted on its website that the names of the seven wonders have been announced in alphabetical order and they do not have any ranking.

Final results will be announced early 2012, said the Swiss foundation, warning however that there may yet be changes between the provisional winners and the final list. The results come after a long consultation process lasting from December 2007 to July 2009, when world citizens were asked to put forward sites which they deemed were natural wonders. More than a million votes were cast to trim the list of more than 440 contenders in over 220 countries down to a shortlist of 77.
Campaign for Bu Tinah

The Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD)  had conducted an extensive campaign to encourage  people to vote for Bu Tinah. The campaign received support from the UAE rulers and  every section of the society.
Bi Tinah  Island is a habitat for seven groups of plant and animal species such as coral reefs, dugongs, natural mangroves, hawksbill turtles, dolphins, ospreys and socotra cormorants. Located around 130km west of Abu Dhabi, it was established as a natural reserve in 2001 and then accepted by Unesco as a core area within the Marawah Marine Biosphere Reserve in 2007 — the first such reserve in the region.

The EAD officials already said they did not bother the results of vote because the campaign for Bu Tinah Island had already born the fruits in terms of the awareness about biodiversity and environmental conservation.

"People who thought the UAE's natural environment was not beyond desert were astonished to know that the country has the second largest population of dugongs, globally significant presence of endangered hawksbill turtles, 13 types of dolphin species and significant presence of mangroves," a senior EAD official told Gulf News. 

Read the rest of this entry »