The Antarctic wilderness is melting, the Dead Sea is shrinking and the Brazilian savannahs are being turned over to agriculture. These are the natural wonders which we should see, or at the very least know about, before it is too late.
You can find out all about these and more in a new guidebook from Frommer's which profiles 500 of the world's most fragile wonders.
Below, we've picked out some of the most remarkable places that you must see.
Brazil's other wildlife haven hosts the greatest concentration of plants and wildlife in South America. The Pantanal is a vast treeless savannah, equal to the size of France, in south-western Brazil. It contains jaguars, maned wolves, giant otters and the brown capuchin (pictured above) among many other creatures.
In the rainy season the waters can rise by as much as 3m covering 80 per cent of the region.
This unspoilt world is becoming a victim of agriculture and gold mining pollution upstream as well as crude tourism.
The world's oldest and deepest lake in south-western Siberia is also home to species found nowhere else on this planet. It is 1,500m deep in some places and contains 20 per cent of the world's unfrozen fresh water and to top it all, scientists reckon it is probably 25 million years old as well.
While at present its waters are so clear you can see hundreds of feet below the surface that may change as it faces pollution from nearby logging industry and coal burning power stations.
The famous snows of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are melting and may soon be gone forever. Although not especially challenging or high at 4,600m, to reach the summit a climber must pass through four radically different climate zones: lush forest, grassy moorlands, barren rock and finally glacial ice. The last part could be lost if the current ice-melt continues for much longer.
First made famous by a visiting Charles Darwin this isolated collection of islands in the Pacific is home to a unique mix of plants and wildlife.
However, the islands are under threat from a variety of sources; increased land and sea tourism, population growth (which brings pollution and habitat destruction) and the invasive species which continue to threaten the native wildlife. Fishing and poaching also threaten the survival of native marine life.
The lowest point on the earth at more than 400m below sea level is disappearing. The Dead Sea is drying up because its only source of water, the River Jordan, is being diverted for agricultural irrigation and other uses.
Monumental iceberg towers and craggy glaciers - Antarctica has a unique wilderness. But it is one that is changing as the frozen continent melts. Global warming is causing rising sea temperatures and melting the icebergs threatening the marine life and many species of penguins that live there.
The world's fourth largest island, off the east coast of Africa, also contains 5 per cent of the world's species with nearly 75 per cent of those not living anywhere else.
Forest clearance to create farmland for poor families is now decimating the island's forests and also the habitat of many of its wildlife such as the black lemur pictured above.
Since the 1970s conservationists estimate that as much as 20 per cent of Brazil's Amazonian rainforest has been lost. Despite years of campaigning, deforestation is still continuing to make room for farming, logging and other industrial activities.