Land reclamation projects are having their wider toll across the world. It does not just imbalance the wetland distribution requirements, but also devastates their resources.
The reclamation at the South Korea’s Saemangeum wetlands – the once estuarine tidal flat on South Korea’s Yellow Sea coast — seems to be recent unavoidable instance. A reclamation project here is grabbing away the food of about 400,000 migratory birds, which used the wetlands on their 24,000km round-trip between Asia and their breeding grounds in the Arctic.
The government-plans to drain the estuary for creating fertile paddy fields are leading to all these irreversible devastation.
With the food at the Saemangeum wetlands destroyed along with the wetlands themselves, many of the birds do not seem to be able to survive the journey.
The changes are already pushing two bird species – the mature spoonbilled sandpipers and the Nordmann’s greenshanks — to the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 remaining in the wild in total.
To mark ‘World Migratory Birds Day’ the UK-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and other wildlife and conservation groups are highlighting Saemangeum’s prevailing environmental problems.
Though undoubtedly, it would be a major awareness drive, not marking a day, but revolutionary initiatives can help stop this irreversible devastating drives against the birds’ last survival.
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