MADRID - UNESCO has put two natural sites, a coral reef in Belize and a national park in Colombia, on its list of endangered world heritage, a statement issued Saturday said.

The UN cultural agency's World Heritage Committee meeting in Seville, Spain, said human activity, some of it illegal, was to blame.

Mangrove cutting and excessive development is the main problem in the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, which was inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List in 1996 as the largest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere, the committee said. It comprises offshore atolls, hundreds of sand cays, mangrove forests, coastal lagoons and estuaries.

'While requesting stricter control of development on the site, the committee also requested that the moratorium on mangrove cutting on the site which expired in 2008 be reinstated,' the committee said.

Los Katios National Park 'is threatened by, notably, deforestation in areas inside and around the property due to the illegal extraction of timber,' the statement said. 'Inscribed in 1994 for its exceptional biological diversity, the site is also suffering from illegal fishing and hunting.'

Los Katios was placed on the Danger List at the request of Bogota 'so as to help mobilise international support for the preservation of the property,' Unesco said.

The committee, which has been meeting since Monday, also named five new sites to Unesco's World Heritage List. They are the sacred Buddhist mountain of Wutai in China, Italy's Dolomite Mountains, the tidal flats and wetlands of the Wadden Sea in Germany and the Netherlands, Cape Verde's 15th century town of Cidade Velha and Burkina Faso's Loropeni ruins.

It also inscribed the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park in the Philippines as an 'extension' to the Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, which joined the World Heritage List in 1993.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's heritage list now comprises some 885 sites that have 'outstanding universal value.'

Unesco announced on Thursday it had removed Dresden's Elbe Valley from the list because the eastern German city had gone ahead with the building of a road bridge 'in the heart of the cultural landscape.' It is only the second site ever to have been removed from the list, after Oman's Arabian Oryx Sanctuary was dropped in 2007. -- AFP