New 7 Wonders

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story on January 7th, 2009 about online voting for the 'new' 7 wonders of the natural world . This voting is being organized by a group that conducted voting last year for the 'new' 7 manmade wonders of the world. This time, voting is being limited to wonders that are natural.

The current phase of the voting is involves scaling down the nominees from over 200 to 77 for the next phase of the voting. The process seems to be well thought out, as each nominee must have an official sponsorship committee to be eligible to move into the next round.

A list of the winners of the 7 manmade wonders is available here . Note that the closest the USA came to getting an entry was the Statue of Liberty, which made the semifinal round.

Glancing at the nominees for the natural 7 wonders, I was interested to see how many I had not heard of, and that some things I had expected to be on the list were not, such as Arches National Park in Utah . (Although another arches park in Libya is present.) US located nominees include Lake Superior , the Grand Canyon , Niagara Falls , and Buck Island Reef in the Virgin Islands . Note that Lake Superior and Niagara Falls are shared with Canada.

It does appear that you have to provide your email in order to vote.

JWF