The new "Seven Wonders of Nature"

The New7Wonders campaign has announced the "New 7 Wonders of Nature," chosen by a combination of public voting and an expert panel led by the former head of UNESCO. National Geographic posted a photo essay of these natural wonders. Above, Iguazú Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina. The others include the Amazon, Halong Bay, Jeju Island, Komodo, Puerto Princesa Underground River, and Table Mountain. "Pictures: Are These the Seven Wonders of Nature?"

• [KWillets]

  These should be listed as the seven wonders of internet voting.  

• [Graysmith]

  Half of them are great picks, half of them are incredibly unworthy being on there.

  Seriously, Table Mountain over the Grand Canyon? Like picking a lump of coal over gold.

  • [KatoKitty]

    You’re just jealous. :-D

    Seriously though, Table Mountain is stunningly beautiful. Photographs don’t do it justice. I live at the foot of the mountain and I can personally attest to how awe-inspiring it is. I never get tired of the sight of this stunning natural monument.

• [Matt Popke]

  Why limit ourselves to seven? It seems so arbitrarily restrictive when natural processes have provided us with so many wonders to marvel at.

• [Jellodyne]

  This reminds me of those poetry contest anthologies — your work in print! (Must buy x books in advance).

  So these people charged 220 countries $200 each to submit a total of 440 for consideration. So that’s $44,000 right there for maybe a couple of day’s work sorting. The 440 submissions  were hand pared to 28 and they held a global vote (read: internet poll) to pick the winners. Now then, the ‘winners’ can choose to license their trademarked phrases and logos to declare one of your tourist destinations one of the “7 New Wonders of the World(tm)”, for a lot more more money. I wonder if the hand paring phase included a consideration of the local tourism bureau budgets.

  Nice work if you can get it.

• [Red Monk]

  Kilimanjaro was robbed!

• [TC Lin]

  More tourism industry marketing.

• [Simon Wegner]

  South Korean nationalists + online poll = Bullshit idea that Jejudo belongs anywhere near the list. Been there.  It’s dull and not half as impressive as many other places that didn’t make the list.  As far as I’m concerned, it should be last out of the 28 finalists. And I actually really like Korea, just not pretending that it is what it isn’t.

• [Logolepsy]

  Antipater of Sidon et al must be rolling in their graves!

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  The Man-Made Wonders are really ridiculous.  It’s a list of old buildings.  They’re nice, but ‘wonders’?  How about the microchip?  Or the ISS?

  • [Paul Renault]

    Or, to quote Al Purdy, from Elegy for a Grandfather, “women with such a glow it makes their background vanish.”

• [hadlockk]

  I spent the day at Iguazu in 2009 (Argentine side). Definitely equally as scenic as Machu Pichu (where I had been the week before), but in it’s own different right. Iguazu is so spectacularly scenic it almost looks like something fake and perfectly planned – like something you might see as the scenery for a disney world theme park ride. 

  It’s no wonder though – something that dramatic makes for an easy landmark in an otherwise impossibly dense jungle when determining the border of three countries – Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

• [T C Carter]

  At first read the title of this as “The new Stevie Wonders of nature.” I was like, WTF?!

• [kristine]

  This is actually a scam. See http://www.goseewrite.com/2011/11/new-7-wonders-world-scam-behind-sham/