Wadden Sea World Heritage Site

The Wadden Sea World Heritage Site is a trilateral protected area spanning the Dutch, German and Danish sections of the Wadden Sea, the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world, along the southeastern North Sea coast of continental Europe. The Dutch and German portions were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009, and Denmark's section was added in 2014 to complete the trilateral site, coordinated jointly by the three countries through the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat and protected on the ground through a set of national parks each country maintains along its own coastline. The site is recognized above all for its role as a critical habitat for millions of migratory and breeding birds crossing the East Atlantic Flyway, a value shaped as much by centuries of coexisting fishing, farming and dike-building communities along its shores as by the tidal landscape itself.