The Environment Ministry selected nine more candidate sites Thursday for the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, an international treaty aimed at conserving globally important wetlands.
They include the Watarase Reservoir, situated in a vast area covering parts of Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Saitama prefectures, and Miyajima Island in Hiroshima Prefecture, home to the Itsukushima Shrine — a UNESCO World Heritage site. The other locations are in Hokkaido and Toyama, Fukui, Aichi, Hyogo, Kumamoto and Okinawa prefectures.
The sites will be formally included in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance when the convention's signatory nations gather in Romania in July.