[3] Seals may also be observed on the sandbanks of the Wadden Sea and the adjacent salt marshes, sandy beaches and sand dunes.

Since the Ramsar Convention of 1971, the present-day national park regions and the Dollart Bay have been protected as "wetlands of international importance".

[citation needed] In 1979 Hans-Joachim Augst and Holger Wesemüller submitted a report, which developed a zoning model based on the different levels of importance of the various areas of the Wadden Sea that were worth protecting.

But by 11 July 2001, the law was amended by the Lower Saxon State Parliament so that many areas were removed from the scope of the national park in order to support tourism or had their zoning downgraded.

To compensate, an area of sea in front of the islands of Borkum and Baltrum and the former nature reserve in the eastern part of the Dollart were added to the national park.

[citation needed] It claimed the EU was supporting largely economically motivated changes to the national park to provide additional tourist facilities at the cost of valuable plant habitats and bird breeding or migration sites.

[citation needed] In July 2006 the twentieth anniversary of the Wadden Sea National Park was celebrated on the beach at Neßmersiel on the initiative of the state of Lower Saxony.

The Lower Saxon nature conservation organizations under the auspices of the WWF, marked the 20-year anniversary with a critical "national park balance",[4] which highlights its many conflicting uses in detail.

Following this, there were newspaper reports claiming that the UNESCO nomination was an "internationally effective marketing tool for the tourism industry" and that additional restrictions imposed for conservation purposes were not involved.

[6] The national park includes land on the islands of Baltrum, Borkum, Langeoog, Juist, Mellum, Memmert, Minsener Oog, Norderney, Spiekeroog and Wangerooge.