When traveling in County Donegal, Ireland a few years ago, we saw peat bogs being harvested - turf farming - for fuel.  The locals told us that UNESCO had declared it 'illegal', but they said they didn't care.  Actually, they did care - they were mad as hell that UNESCO assumed they had the right to declare their private property as 'biosphere preserves'.
And then there is Venice, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Venice can't afford to repair its structures that have decayed due to pollution, because UNESCO insists they use original materials - which was marble mined in Croatia, which is far more expensive than Italian  marble that could be used.  The UNESCO bureaucrats won't back down on this, so Venice just continues to rot in place.

It's not just pretentious Americans - it's pretentious One World bureaucrats .. UNESCO may have been a good idea, but it's become a double-edged sword for many countries.  They like the 'Heritage' designations, they hate the bureaucracy.