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Saemangeum in South Korea is one of the best birding sites in the world - a vast estuarine wetland supporting at least 27 species of waterbird in internationally important concentrations, including recent world-record breaking counts of 210 Spoon-billed Sandpiper and 61 Spotted Greenshank; over 640 Saunders's Gull; and flocks of Chinese Egret and Black-faced Spoonbill. It should be a site of world renown, a national park or bird reserve. But instead, it is being wholly reclaimed - 40 100 ha of bird habitat and fisheries, slated for conversion into rice-field or industrial estates, in the world's largest ongoing coastal reclamation project.

Started twelve years ago, the Saemangeum reclamation has long been challenged by Korean NGOs and increasingly by the general public. Citing the needs of the "national interest", government has pushed on however, despite the failures of other similar projects due to pollution and poor design and the collapse of much of the country's once prosperous fisheries. Meeting with only limited international criticism, the South Korean government has also chosen to overlook its obligations to international conventions (such as Ramsar and the Convention on Biological Diversity), dismissing the obvious and enormous impact that this reclamation project will have on migratory bird populations - including that of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper.

In July this year though, with less than 2 years to go before the 33-km long seawall is due for completion, the project has finally hit two massive stumbling blocks. The first was the airing on BBC World of the documentary "Hard Dyke" (online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3046368.stm) - which helped kick-start a major international campaign. The second was a stunning decision by a Korean court to rule against the project. On July 15th, citing fears over excessive pollution and the now-accepted lack of a clear end use for the land to be created, the court ruled that the project be suspended – immediately...

"Development" Ministries involved in this controversial project predictably object to the ruling and the political consequences of it. They have demanded that the court hear their own "expert" witnesses, on August 18th. A few weeks later, the court will then rule on whether to continue with the project or to rule it illegal. In the second case, unless government as a whole understands the folly of destroying one of the world's greatest estuaries, the court's decision will not be allowed to stand.

The present stay of execution, and the rapidly growing concern felt inside South Korea about the impact on the nation's international image provoked by the reclamation, have given us a real chance to deal this project a devastating blow.

WBKEnglish, a small international network based in Korea and the UK, has therefore joined with Korea's largest environmental NGO (KFEM), and launched an email petition: with the support of list-servers and websites around the world we have already gathered over 3200 signatures from 58 countries in just over 2 weeks...we still need more, however, many more (if all the birders around the world who wanted to see Spoon-billed Sandpiper were to sign...). This petition will form the core of a coordinated campaign, involving leading NGOs in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and South Korea. They will be handed in with protest letters on August 14th (a few days before the court convenes for a second time) direct to several South Korean embassies around the world as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Korea itself. For "That Sandpiper", and for the love of the world's special places, please take the time to sign (it'll take less than the time, in fact, than it took to read the account above...).

http://www.wbkenglish.com/petition01.asp