As the world continues to suffer the detrimental effects of global warming, more and more of our natural wonders are threatened with extinction.
The world is full of spectacular views, but climate change and the booming tourism industry threaten some of the most spectacular spots on our planet.
You've heard a gloomy timeline: if warming continues, the Great Barrier Reef will be bleached by 2030; glaciers in the Swiss Alps, at Mt. Kilimanjaro, and in Glacier National Park will disappear in less than 40 years; and the melting Arctic ice will make the North Pole bare and the polar bear is extinct.
The proximity of this timeline encourages a flock of eco-tourists who are curious to travel to environmentally fragile areas.
Tourism is like a double-edged sword: it can add tension to a depressed region, but also can provide income, which in turn can help preserve this miracle.
If you decide to plan a trip, we recommend our favorite tour operators for each destination.
In some cases, the price tag may be higher than your average holiday, but consider investing in Mother Earth.
When determining the right holiday destinations, consider visiting the following nine locations because their days on Earth are numbered.
#1. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Not that there is much competition, but Utah's grand staircase is one of the most amazing natural stairs in the world. Every step brings pedestrians through the layers of history, totaling 200 million years.
Sedimentary rock erosion reveals prehistoric plants, vegetables, animals and the largest collection of dinosaur fossils found anywhere in the world. But you need more than one day off to see it.
The grand Grand National-Escalante National Monument-about the size of Delaware-with lots of rock formations, hiking trails, camping and horse riding to keep you busy all year long over a long weekend.
At least while still around.
#2. Giant Sequoia National Monument
Giant Sequoias can grow and grow as tall as skyscrapers and can be as wide as your first apartment.
And at the Giant Sequoia National Monument in California, you can hold your neck to see the majesty of 328,000 hectares of them.
To see the best of what this park has to offer, follow a well-marked trail.
They will take you through one of the oldest living organisms on earth (the 2,000-year-old Boole Tree), Trail of A Hundred Giants, and Converse Basin: the falling area of Sequoia stumps felled before these endangered trees are protected in a federal way.
#3. Vermilion Cliffs National Monument
If you define each destination with a potential #travelgram, then the National Vermilion Cliffs Monument should be at the top of your list.
The colorful trippy lines from their most famous rock formations - The Wave and Coyote Buttes - are some of the most photographed photos in the world.
But, you have to commit to getting people like to 'gram.
Because the site is very popular, this park only allows 20 visitors per day (and places fill up quickly) to help protect this popular photo from excessive foot traffic.
#4. National Monument of the Ancient Canyon
Typically, history takes place in a straight line. But in the Ancient Gorge, 10,000 years of history spread over a large area.
This National Monument has the highest archaeological site density in North America.
Over 6,300 images of caves, cliff dwellings, ancient temples, and settlements appear almost everywhere you look.
Ascend and you can track human history from the moment we fight the wooly mammoth and the toothed cat for agricultural development until an era when tourists come from miles down there to admire it all.
#5. Desert Sonora National Monument
There comes a time in everyone's life as they look around their friends and loved ones and think, "I can get in the car and get out of here and nobody can stop me."
The best National Monument for a beautiful and isolated escape is the Sonoran Desert.
Its vast, flat, covered cactus covered almost half a million hectares, adorned with isolated mountains and some of the most beautiful and biologically diverse wildlife and plants in North America.
But unlike most of the world's tourist attractions, this isolation oasis has almost no people.
Camp, hike, discover ancient rock art and artifacts and pretend to be the last human on earth.
#6. Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument
© Bureau of Land Management via Wikimedia Commons, [CC BY 2.0]
Badlands Montana is as dramatic as their sound.
People have admired the amazing geography of its white cliffs and steep cliffs long before Lewis and Clark first documented them in 1805.
There is no better place for dramatic black and white photography or camping in places where the west is the wildest.
The wild grazing sheep here produces great companies, but in 1985 farms dug by breeders here can make Upper Missouri Breaks a bit too crowded in the future if they lose their protected status.
#7. Northeast Canyons & Seamounts Marine
Someone once described seeing sea life here as "walking in Dr. Seuss's garden."
There is a 1,000-year-old coral, an endangered species of marine life not found elsewhere on earth, plus some familiar faces like sea turtles, octopuses, whale species, and dolphins that swim over hundreds of heads.
Expert divers can explore three deeper undersea gorges than the Grand Canyon and four underwater mountains.
And if you do not dive, maybe you should consider learning sooner than later.
This protected area is also a potential drilling and fishing site, two possible futures if the loss of protection.
#8. Bear Ears National Monument
Bears Ears National Monument gets its name from its twin buttes tower at its center.
But the national monument of 1.35 million hectares is much more: juniper forest, smooth red rock formations, and an outdoor museum.
Well, "museum" can be a stretch. Grand Gulch has more than 10,000 ancestral Puebloan ruins of 800 to 1,200 years: shelter, buildings, equipment, pottery, and even a community notice board with 2,000 years notice.
What is not owned is a maid who blocks visitors or prevents them from touching (or destroying) all of them.
This newly minted monument is in the process of installing such structures to protect the artifacts, but they may do so if the region loses its federal protection.
#9. Plain Carrizo National Monument
Wildflowers that bloom at the Carrizo Plain National Monument is one of the best secrets in California.
When the condition is right, flower any carpet to the color of the valley floor to create the most beautiful natural scenery.
But even as the amount of pollen is not crazy, white alkali soda flats from soda lakes, ancient cave drawings, and strange creatures such as leopard lizards, giant kangaroo rats, and antelope squirrels attract many visitors.