PARIS/NEW DELHI, July 26 (FENA) – The Vjetrenica Cave in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as of today, it was voted on Friday in New Delhi at the 46th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

The Vjetrenica Cave was on the list of 27 nominated sites and was placed on the UNESCO List of Cultural and Natural Heritage.

The World Heritage Committee is one of the two bodies governing the Convention for the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage. It is composed of the representatives of 21 States, elected from the 195 States parties to the Convention.

The Committee is responsible for implementing the Convention, for examining new proposals for inscription on the World Heritage List, and for assessing the state of conservation of sites already inscribed, on the basis of analyses produced by UNESCO’s advisory bodies and Secretariat. It meets once a year in an ordinary session.

Located in the Dinaric mountain range, the property stands out with its remarkable cave biodiversity and endemicity. Known since antiquity, the well-conserved representation of karst topography is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots for cave-dwelling fauna, notably subterranean aquatic fauna.

It is home to a number of globally threatened vertebrate species, and the only subterranean tubeworm in the world, as well as a diversity of plant species endemic to the Balkans.

Additionally, several of the species found in Vjetrenica Cave are tertiary and pre-tertiary relict species, meaning that many of them can be considered living fossils whose closest relatives went extinct a long time ago.