Natural beauty and wildlife spots in Australia, Japan and Kenya have won UNESCO world heritage status, the UN cultural body said on Friday. The Paris-based body added the Ningaloo Coast in Western Australia, Japan's remote Ogasawara Islands and the Kenya Lake System in the Rift Valley province, to its heritage list, a valuable tourism-boosting asset.
The 32,000-hectare Kenyan lake district is home to rhinos, giraffes and lions. It is also "the single most important foraging site for the lesser flamingo anywhere, and a major nesting and breeding ground for great white pelicans," UNESCO said. The remote Ningaloo Coast boasts a big reef and sea turtles and is the scene of an annual gathering of white whales, it added, in a statement.
The Ogasawara Islands, known in English as the Bonin Islands, are a cluster in the Pacific a thousand kilometres (620 miles) south-east of the Japanese mainland, and home to numerous animal species and hundreds of native plants. These include "the Bonin Flying Fox, a critically endangered bat, and 195 endangered bird species," UNESCO said.