As one of the many activities that took place for IYM, Jim Thorsell and Larry Hamilton prepared an overview of the current coverage of mountain areas on the World Heritage (WH) List and identified other mountains that would have potential for nomination to this prestigious list. The review was prepared with the advice of 15 members of WCPA's Mountain Theme Programme and published jointly by the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture and IUCN in September 2002. (Copies available on request from IUCN's Protected Area Programme and on the UNESCO, WHC and WCMC web sites.  http://www.unep-wcmc.org/index.html,  http://www.unep-wcmc.org/wh/reviews/~main)

In setting criteria for inclusion on the list, the authors considered only sites of at least 10,000 hectares with minimum relative relief of 1500 m. The overview determined that 55 mountain sites from all biogeographic realms of the world have been inscribed on the WH List to date, with another 3 nominations awaiting decision by the WH Committee. This total amounts to one third of all natural and mixed-natural and cultural sites on the List, which makes mountains one of the 3 most “represented” biomes on the List (the other 2 are terrestrial wetlands and marine and coastal sites). This high number is partly explained by the fact that mountains, with their distinctive geology, outstanding scenic features, and high levels of biodiversity and endemism, often clearly qualify under the 4 WH criteria (geology, ecological processes, biodiversity, and aesthetic beauty). The attraction of mountains for people too is strong, with these 55 sites recording some 47 million visitors, about 70% of all visitors to natural WH sites.

To round out the ultimate “system” of mountain WH sites, the overview suggests 2 actions for state parties to consider. First is to review extension proposals for 19 existing mountain sites where current boundaries are considered suboptimal. A second action is to examine the values of 28 additional mountain areas, which appear to merit nomination. Particular regions of priority attention would be the Polar regions and Central Asia.