(KS) Buffer zone-haven for animals

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fv20020917a1.htm

 

Breaking down the barriers

A peace park, before peace, on the Korean Peninsula?

 

By LUCILLE CRAFT

Special to The Japan Times

 

SEOUL -- American presidents, soccer stars, paying

tourists and the occasional squad of Dallas Cowboy

cheerleaders airlifted in to boost U.S. troop morale

regularly bus through select checkpoints in the Korean

demilitarized zone, but otherwise this 246-km-long, 4

km-wide strip of land is one desolate piece of real

estate. Grim-faced South and North Korean soldiers

toting machineguns prowl the barbed-wire perimeter,

facing off across the foreboding no man's land that

has separated the Korean Peninsula for the past 50

years. " Demilitarized zone " seems a misnomer for what

is actually the most heavily fortified place on Earth,

surrounded by 1.5 million soldiers and countless land

mines.

 

But now, momentum is building from within South Korea

and abroad to turn this cordon of hell into a patch of

heaven -- a world-class, jointly managed nature

sanctuary. Ironically, the continuing standoff between

North and South Korea has already transformed the DMZ

into a wildlife paradise, the last refuge for many

species vanished or threatened with oblivion on the

rest of the Peninsula.

 

" Korea created an accidental sanctuary from a

tragedy, " says Seung Ho Lee, president of the

U.S.-based nonprofit DMZ Forum, which organized an

international conference in Seoul last spring on

environmental cooperation in the zone. " It's not just

a national, but an international treasure. "

 

Proponents of the sanctuary plan argue that it would

not only benefit wildlife, but also play a vital role

in reversing the Peninsula's profound environmental

decline and help reduce tensions between the

arch-enemies. A joint peace sanctuary, they say, would

also be the most apt monument to the 4 million

soldiers and civilians who perished in the Korean War.

 

The notion of neighboring countries jointly managing

nature areas on their borders dates back to 1932, when

Rotarians in Montana and Alberta successfully

petitioned the American and Canadian governments to

set up the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.

Since then, similar cross-border nature schemes have

been set up in many other parts of the world.

 

The United Nations Education, Science and Cultural

Organization (UNESCO), refined the idea of peace parks

further in the early 1990s when it developed the

concept of " transboundary biosphere reserves " (TBRs),

conservation areas where ordinary citizens and

governments cooperate not only to save species, but

also to manage resources and promote sensible

development. Such reserves include a protected core,

used to house rare species and serve as a scientific

control site, and buffer and transition zones where

managed human activity and resource use is allowed.

 

To biologists, the idea of getting countries to join

forces on conservation is simply common sense.

Political boundaries are rarely, if ever, drawn along

ecological borders, and protected birds and animals

often migrate back and forth -- as with, say, the

red-crowned cranes that pass over the DMZ. Aboriginal

cultures and native peoples often span both sides of

national borders. In addition, with countries sharing

a lake, river or other body of water, lax protections

on one side can easily neutralize strict conservation

controls on the other.

 

By setting up a TBR, countries have a shot at

developing a more sensible strategy for tracking and

protecting rare species. They can also double their

clout when it comes to applying for research grants,

and pool their scientific expertise.

 

But the real beauty of TBRs lies in their potential to

go beyond technical scientific cooperation and provide

a common ground for interaction between ordinary

citizens of bordering nations. By bringing together

local people on both sides of the border, via

sustainable farming or fishing projects, joint

disaster prevention, or ecotourism and environmental

education, the transboundary reserve offers an

alternative avenue for reducing mutual ignorance and

distrust, and hence minimizes the chance for conflict

and tensions along borders.

 

As awareness of the benefits a Korean TBR could bring

to the Peninsula increases, plans for a peace park are

gaining official support. South Korea recently

announced that it will apply to UNESCO to have part of

the DMZ declared a cross-border protected nature zone.

It would be the first step toward joining forces with

its archrival on joint conservation.

 

" We see no reason for North Korea to object " to the

plan, Shim Soo Kyong, of South Korea's UNESCO office,

told the Korea Herald in May. Pyongyang at the last

minute pulled its representative from the Seoul

symposium, but in the past has hinted it would support

a transboundary preserve. South Korea's Environment

Ministry is drawing up plans for a TBR that would

convert the DMZ into an idyll of sustainable land use,

ecotourism and sealed habitats for rare plants and

animals.

 

Such news is bird song to the ears of one of the most

vocal and tireless campaigners for a DMZ sanctuary --

Korean-American scholar and activist Ke Chung Kim, who

founded the DMZ Forum several years ago to promote a

bilateral sanctuary between the two Koreas. A native

of Seoul who emigrated to the United States 40 years

ago and now teaches entomology at Pennsylvania State

University, Kim has never been one to stick to his

butterflies and formaldehyde. Influenced by the

philosophy of U.S. biologist Rachel Carson, who

alerted the world to the dangers of pesticide, Kim

watched with horror as his native land -- taking its

cues from neighboring Japan -- embarked on a reckless

orgy of industrialization and public works, inevitably

unleashing its own " silent spring. " Taking a stroll

through a farming area on one of his frequent visits

home, in the 1960s, " I suddenly realized there was

dead silence. " The chorus of frogs he remembered from

his youth had been stilled by pesticides, pollution

and overdevelopment.

 

Once lauded in Korean literature as a breathtaking

" land of embroidered rivers and mountains, " the

southern half of the Korean Peninsula today is

breathtakingly filthy, more aptly named the " land of

industrial estates and urban sprawl. " " This country is

superficially clean, but every river is polluted, "

says Kim. " There are a lot of mutant fishes. " While

South Korea has yet to suffer an epic industrial

tragedy on the scale of Japan's Minamata or Yokkaichi

pollution cases, Kim argues that degradation on the

Korean Peninsula is so severe " it's a disaster waiting

to happen -- and the politicians don't want to talk

about it. "

 

He ticks off a list of grim facts: Widespread

hazardous-waste contamination; massive reclamation of

coastlines and salt marshes; waste-clogged rivers and

waterways; smog and severe acid rain -- and few signs

the administration is ready to do anything about it.

Indeed, a biodiversity report coauthored by Kim in

2000 reckoned that more than one-fifth of South

Korea's land species are on or over the brink of

extinction, including 10 percent of its birds, 23

percent of freshwater fishes, a third of its mammals,

almost half of all reptiles and two-thirds of

amphibians. The undeveloped North, meanwhile, has

suffered rampant deforestation, with consequent soil

erosion and flooding.

 

Compare this gloomy portrait to the wildlife-abundant

DMZ, says Kim, and the conclusion is obvious: The DMZ

is the " crown jewel " of the Peninsula, the key to

restoring degraded environments across the country.

 

To restore or maintain a particular ecosystem,

scientists need a " control site, " or a portrait of the

ecosystem's original topography and catalog of

species. The DMZ, which traverses the Peninsula from

its eastern highlands of Mongolian oak and maple

forest, through the central mixed forests and western

stands of Japanese red pine, and even includes

offshore islands and marine areas, is a perfect cross

section of local geography, geology and climate. Its

restricted status means that Kim and his associates

can only make educated guesses at exactly what

treasures it harbors. But studies of the southern

buffer area flanking the barbed-wire fences, the

semirestricted Civilian Control Zone, suggest that it

is a priceless repository for rare flora and fauna,

and therefore offers scientists the chance to

reintroduce species to the rest of the country.

 

A six-year study sponsored by the South Korean

government, for example, recorded over 1,000 plant

species and 600 species of animals in the buffer area,

including over a third of the Peninsula's plants,

two-thirds of its fishes and amphibians, and about

half of Korean reptiles. Most of Korea's birds and

mammals -- including the endangered Chinese egret,

red-crowned crane, musk deer and black bear -- are

also known to exist in the lush DMZ ecosystem.

 

" By accident, the DMZ has become one of the world's

most important areas for birds, " acknowledged George

Archibald, a leading ornithologist and founder of the

Wisconsin-based International Crane Foundation.

Archibald, who has monitored the DMZ's buffer zones

since 1970, says the area's islands, mud flats, river

valleys and forests are critical, as one of the few

resting areas available on the migration route between

Siberia and Australia. The area, he said, is the most

important breeding area for the globally threatened

black-faced spoonbill, a white-plumed cousin of the

ibis numbering about 900 on the fertile estuary of the

Imjin River. White-naped cranes en route to Japan,

sometimes 1,000 at a time, also stop in the DMZ, as do

swans, ducks and the black vulture.

 

The fate of such species may rest on the way in which

the DMZ is ultimately developed. Instead of a trade

center, housing development or soccer stadium -- among

the many dream projects of South Korean industrialists

for the DMZ -- conservationists talk of setting up a

patchwork of areas within the 907-sq. km DMZ and

adjacent 1,369-sq. km buffer zones, ranging from

sustainable farming and fishing areas and ecotourism,

to closed sanctuaries accessible only to scientists

and researchers. Two railways and five highways are

already planned or under construction to transverse

the DMZ; conservationists are calling for rigorous

environmental impact studies well before bulldozers

are permitted to raze portions of the wilderness.

 

Endrunning business interests to establish

transboundary nature reserves is a tricky proposition

even among friendly neighbors; DMZ conservationists

face additional obstacles. South Korean President Kim

Dae Jung's " sunshine policy " of rapprochement with the

North through economic cooperation would be disastrous

for the DMZ ecosystem, speakers at the spring Seoul

symposium pointed out. North Korea is as eager to gain

foreign development assistance as South Korean

" chaebol " are to expand northward. " South Korea[n

business] is ready to move into North Korea, " Ke Chung

Kim said ruefully. " They'll destroy it faster than

they have here. " For many Koreans the DMZ is a hated

symbol of family separation, and there is considerable

support for abolishing it altogether, when and if

reunification becomes a reality.

 

But with South Korea finally enjoying stable growth

and prosperity, Ke Chung Kim says the climate is

improving for DMZ preservation.

 

" The DMZ is still thought of in terms of war, " Ke

Chung Kim said recently in Seoul. " But now, it could

be a bridge and a vehicle for peace and security. "

 

Lucille Craft is a freelance writer and founder of the

Kuril Island Network ( www.kurilnature.org), a

nonprofit organization that advocates international

conservation of the Kuril Islands.

 

The Japan Times: Sept. 17, 2002

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