“He stoppeth one of three”: Surveying the Remnants of Wild Korea

I have lived and worked in Korea since 1998. Every year I travel the country, surveying birds and their habitats and working with colleagues to build a clearer picture of Korea’s environment in order to support conservation. These experiences, while helping feed our scientific curiosity, increasingly evoke memories of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a poem written more than two centuries ago. It describes a journey through both the external and the internal world, and it speaks much of the human urge to control and kill and of our need to live more wisely.

In 2014 alone, work took me along the frozen lengths of the Han and Geum rivers in search of the endangered and punk-crested scaly-sided merganser; out to sea off Goseong County in Gangwon Province, with its jagged mountain backdrop; and to the top of Seorak Mountain in the exhausting heat of summer. I also re-visited Jeju and spent weeks on Baekryeong Island in the northwest and a week on Ulleung out in the East Sea. For a second time, I also went out to Dok-do, “where the morning starts in Korea” and where tired migrant birds crossing the East Sea can find essential rest. I even visited Rason in the far northeast, where the Korean peninsula ends and Russia and China begin. There, on the DPRK side of the Tuman River, our international team helped local officials map out a bird reserve in an area of farms and wetlands where the Siberian Tiger still survives – just.

“Beauty no tongue might declare”

There is still unspeakable beauty to be found in many of Korea’s landscapes. During 2014, I saw pink and orange-washed mountains at dusk, Amur leopard cats and river otters, and clouds of shorebirds that shimmered first dark then light against the sky. I have also been moved, often, by the beautiful warmth of people whose lives seem – on the surface, at least – to have been very different from mine.

But there is also increasing sadness.

“And I had done a hellish thing”

In my own short time in Korea, the curve and expanse of many of the nation’s wildest rivers have become ever more confined by dams, roads and bicycle trails; several of the more remote mountain peaks, like Taebaek, believed to be home to wild gray wolves into the late 1980s, now house giant wind turbines; and even on offshore islands, bulldozers roar over the sound of the waves.

People have gained economically in recent years, but the nation and the world continue to lose much in terms of natural abundance and a sense of connection to place. Most people have more things, but are we happier?

“With my cross-bow I shot the Albatross”

If we felt fulfilled, we would respect, understand and value the natural ecosystems that support life. We do not. Instead, we canalize rivers and replace wild spaces with parks, staked out with monuments and fences. The latest Birds Korea report, “Status of Birds, 2014,” confirms that during the last century five species of bird that were once regular have been lost to the ROK, and almost a third of all regular species have declined substantially. These species have decreased because we first hunted them and then destroyed or degraded their habitat. Now, fully three-quarters of the nation’s tidal flats have been reclaimed, and almost all natural freshwater wetlands have been lost.

Of course, it is not only birds that have declined as a result. A review in 1999 found that almost half of the 95 mammal species recorded in Korea were rare, threatened or had become extinct. Several of these, like the red fox, have already been lost to the southern provinces and, for now, can only survive in the true wilderness of the far north. Many other species are in decline, from fish to insects and plant species, many of which are found only in Korea.

We are but one species on a species-rich planet, and yet we are consuming more than the land and sea can provide. We keep shooting the albatross that inspires us. We keep feasting, even when we need to import most of our food, and when our choices are driving extinctions and threatening our own future.

For the year ahead and beyond, we need, finally, to give up the self-delusion that our species is somehow in control. We need to become more active for conservation and to celebrate the vitality of life properly: “Oh happy living things!”