Stonehenge one of world’s most threatened wonders

Busy traffic around Stonehenge has put the prehistoric monument on a list of the most threatened wonders of the world, according to Wanderlust magazine.

The Government has decided to abandon a plan to bury the roads around Stonehenge, including the busy A303 and A344 junctions, in an underground tunnel because of cost concerns.

stonehenge traffic

It has also decided not to establish a permanent visitor centre at the site, instead pledging to create a simpler and cheaper visitor centre a mile away in time for London’s 2012 Olympics.

Liz Hughes, editor-in-chief of Wanderlust, said Stonehenge was ‘brutally divorced from its context’ by the surrounding roads, adding: ‘Seeing it without its surrounding landscape is to experience only a fraction of this historical wonder.

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‘The fact that the Government and various planning bodies cannot agree on implementing a radical solution to this problem is a national disgrace.’

Other wonders of the world in danger, according to Wanderlust, include 4×4-scarred Wadi Rum in Jordan and the tourist-eroded Inca site at Machu Picchu in Peru.

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