Photos: Top 10: Places to see before they vanish

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Have you been to the Sunderbans?
In the years since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 the environmentalist movement made great strides with passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and other groundbreaking laws. But there are places still endangered due to global warming, war, population explosion and rising sea levels that may disappear in the years to come. Our top 10.

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Manas Wildlife Sanctuary
High on the endangered list of UNESCO, the site takes its name from the Goddess Manasa. It is noted for its spectacular scenery, with a variety of habitat types that support a diverse fauna, making it the richest of all Indian wildlife areas. The park represents the core of an extensive tiger reserve that protects an important migratory wildlife resource along the West Bengal to Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan borders. Its wetlands are of international importance. It is also the single most important site for the survival of pygmy hog, hispid hare and golden langur. The park, which includes part of Manas Reserve Forest and all of North Kamrup Reserve Forest, constitutes the core of Manas Tiger Reserve located in the forest divisions of Kachugaon, Haltugaon, Western Assam Wildlife and North Kamrup.

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Bamiyan Valley
The Bamiyan Valley lies some 264 km by road west of Kabul, enclosed within the high mountains of the Hindu Kush, in the central highlands of Afghanistan. The valley, at an altitude of 2,500 m, follows the Bamiyan River. It formed one of the branches of the Silk Road and its beautiful landscape is associated with legendary figures. It was these aspects that contributed to its development as a major religious and cultural centre. It was inhabited and partly urbanized from the 3rd century BC.

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Vanuatu
Vanuatu is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some 1,750 kilometres east of northern Australia, 500 kilometres northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea. The island has been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea.

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Ghoramara, Sunderbans
Two-thirds of the island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Ghoramara is an island located 150 km south of Kolkata, in the Sundarbans Delta complex of the Bay of Bengal. The island is small, roughly five square kilometers in area, and is quickly disappearing due to erosion and sea level rise. Global warming has caused the rivers that pour down from the Himalayas and empty into the Bay of Bengal to swell and shift in recent decades, placing these islands, known as the Sundarbans, in danger, four islands are already completely underwater and another 10 in the area are at risk. A recent study found that during the last 30 years, roughly 80 square kilometers, or 31 square miles, of the Sundarbans have disappeared.