Wadden Sea

Protected since 1985 on the German side and extended with the Dutch and Danish sections, the Wadden Sea forms the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats on the planet, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009 as a transboundary natural property across three countries. It is a critical staging post for more than 10 million migratory birds that cross it each year between the Arctic and West Africa, and its tides expose and cover as much as a third of its total area every day.