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Sceilg Mhichíl
Places
Explore our cultural and natural heritage sites across the globe
Preserving Legacies is partnered with 10 cultural and natural heritage sites in 2023. These places of cultural significance, explored below, represent different heritage typologies, like archeological sites and living agricultural landscapes, and different climate threats, like sea level rise and extreme heat. While this diverse first cohort spans continents, cultures, and climate impacts, they all share a deep commitment to learn, connect, and build something new together.
Primary Sites
In the first year of Preserving Legacies, our two primary sites will go through a more robust program to link climate science and site conservation by enabling access to locally downscaled climate change models and organize a community-led workshop of the sites’ climate vulnerability as well as impacts on local communities.
Cadet Sites
In the first year of Preserving Legacies, eight cadet sites have been chosen to fully engage in climate heritage training and a peer-to-peer learning experience. Site custodians from these sites will shadow the full process at Petra and the Rice Terraces, including attending their workshops, to better prepare for their own assessments in 2024.
Ireland
Sceilg Mhichíl
Located in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland, the monastic site of Sceilg Mhichíl characterises the extremes of early Christian monasticism. Its extreme isolation has resulted in exceptional levels of preservation including well-preserved access steps, a monastery, a remote hermitage and other monastic structures. In addition, the island embodies the establishment of lighthouses on Ireland’s coast in the 1820s – a project that was particularly challenging along the Atlantic seaboard. Sceilg Mhichíl is also one of Ireland’s most important sites for breeding seabirds, both for the diversity of the species and the size of the colonies it supports. Its extreme location off Ireland’s Atlantic west coast leaves the heritage of the island particularly exposed to the impact of extreme weather.