Requiem pour les vasières sud-coréennes

The Yellow Sea, bordered by the Korea peninsula and China, has an estimated 2 million ha of remaining tidal-flats (in 2002). It forms the core staging area for an estimated 2 millions migratory shorebirds in spring and a further 1 million in autumn. This represents no less than 40% of the total number of (long-range) migratory shorebirds supported by the whole East Asian-Australasian Flyway .
Due to differences in coastal slope and tidal-ranges, intertidal wetlands of South Korea are not distributed evenly around the coast, and approximately 83% of tidal-flats are found along the west coast, with 17% along the south coast.
But the South Korean intertidal wetlands are more and more threatened, and a large part of them have already been reclaimed, and the huge Saemangeum reclamation in 2006, due to the construction of a 33-km seawall, is one of the most striking examples of the failure of existing policy and legislation to conserve the nation’s most bio-diverse ecosystems. The Saemangeum estuarine system was the single most important known site for shorebirds in the nation and in the Yellow Sea.
The April – July 2010 Birds Korea (www.birdskorea.org) Newsletter speaks about the destruction of the intertidal wetlands of the country.