Song Do in Incheon has a special place in ornithological history, being home during the 1920s to Korea’s first ornithologist (Dr. Won Hong-Koo: 1888-1970), and the nation’s first bird collection. Eighty years on, despite much reclamation, the Song Do tidal-flats also supported the second-ever breeding colony of the Vulnerable Saunders’s Gull Larus saundersi and probably the largest-ever concentration of wintering Vulnerable Relict Gull Larus relictus (with at least 143 in February 2001) outside of China. Even now, the remaining tidal-flat at Song Do (also threatened with imminent reclamation), still supports internationally important concentrations of the globally Endangered Black-faced Spoonbill Platelea minor, and 27,130 shorebirds were counted there during the National Shorebird Survey in May 2008. These included 8,159 Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris (2.5% of the world population) and eleven (more than 1%) of the globally Endangered Nordmann’s Greenshank Tringa guttifer. All those familiar with the Ramsar Convention will know that any wetland regularly supporting more than 20,000 waterbirds; or more than 1% of a population of a waterbird; or an assemblage of rare or threatened waterbird species, should be considered “internationally important”. Moreover, that by signing on to the Ramsar Convention, all contracting nations (including South Korea) have agreed formally and publicly that such internationally important wetlands should be conserved. With the Tenth Ramsar Convention Conference to be held here in South Korea in October, now is clearly the time to halt the tidal-wave of coastal reclamation afflicting the internationally important wetlands at Song Do, Saemangeum, Asan Bay, Namyang Bay and so many other inter-tidal wetlands in Korea and the wider Yellow Sea Eco-region. Now is the time for conservation: wise use of wetlands, and a move towards genuinely sustainable development.
