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South Korea is betting a multi-billion dollar land reclamation project about seven times the size of Manhattan will lift the economy but environmentalists say it could be one of the country’s biggest ecological blunders.

The Saemangeum land reclamation project uses a 33-km (20.5 mile) sea dyke to reclaim an area of 400 square kms (155 sq miles), turning coastal tidelands that are key feeding areas for globally threatened birds into land for factories, golf courses and water treatment plants.

“This project is not about protecting the environment. It is about economic development. And we will do that in an environmentally sound way,” said Park Hyoungbae, an official with the Saemangeum development authority.

The authority said the project, built at a cost of nearly $3 billion, will bring industry to North Jeolla, a province that has traditionally been the agricultural breadbasket of the country but lacks modern industry.

Developers will start construction of an industrial zone next year, offering sweeteners like free land leases for 100 years for selected industries and a free economic zone that offers tax breaks to attract foreign investors, who can stay in a village planned just for them.

They will replace natural wetlands with artificial ones and turn riverbeds into man-made lakes. They will build a park along the road on the sea dyke and try to attract tourists with a theme park, convention center and even perhaps a casino.

“Saemangeum will turn Korea into a much happier place,” said an announcer on a promotional video for potential investors.

The province, which runs from the middle of South Korea to the west coast, is dotted with small farms that grow grain and raise pigs, boasts a mid-sized port that serves China across the Yellow Sea and is home the historic city of Jeonju, once the capital an ancient Korean kingdom.

Saemangeum has drawn the attention of developers in other parts of Asia, which conservationists said could lead them to try to duplicate the engineering feat in South Korea for their own massive land reclamation projects.

BUREAUCRATIC INERTIA

South Korea originally launched the project for the estuary, about 200 kms south of Seoul, decades ago when its economy was struggling, food was short and reclamation seemed like a good way to increase farm land in the mountainous and cramped country .

After years of legal wrangling and changes in how to use the land, construction started on the project in 1999 with hundreds of thousands of boulders the size of compact cars dumped into the Yellow Sea estuary to form the dyke that was completed in 2006.

Area farmers have questioned the need for the project, saying there is no one left to work the land due to a population drop while major domestic industry has often stayed away due to a lack of infrastructure.

Critics said the project stayed alive due to bureaucratic inertia and because it created construction jobs in the area that has provided the strongest political support for left-leaning presidents who ruled from 1998 to 2008.

The current conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, who used to run Hyundai’s construction arm, has also thrown his support to the project, saying it will help regional development and stimulate his country’s export-driven economy that is on the ropes due to the global slowdown.

“Saemangeum’s ecological importance seems to be more valued abroad,” said Yoon Sang-hoon of the conservation group Green Korea.

“The government is calling this environmentally friendly, but just planting a few trees that have since died does not make it a green project,” Yoon said.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

Wetlands such as Saemangeum help in flood control, prevent soil erosion and can remove, as well as store, greenhouse gases from the Earth’s atmosphere, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

One of North Asia’s biggest recent projects to reclaim land from tidal wetlands was in Japan’s Isahaya Bay, in the southwest of the country. It has proven to be a disaster, leading to drops in sea water quality and poor soil on land, according to research reports from Japanese academics.

In June, a Japanese court ordered the government to open the sluice gates at Isahaya, shut in 1997, saying the project has caused harm to fisheries and damaged the region’s environment.

Even though there is still water flowing occasionally through sluice gates at Saemangeum, the project has already taken its toll on the environment by destroying wetlands and pushing endangered species toward extinction, conservation groups said.

Migratory birds traveling between Russia and Alaska in the north to New Zealand and Australia in the south congregate for often their only refueling stop at Yellow Sea tidal flats to feast on shellfish and other food.

A study released last month by conservation groups Birds Korea and Australasian Wader Studies Group recorded a decline of 137,000 shorebirds, and declines in 19 of the most numerous species, from 2006 to 2008 at Saemangeum.

The study indicated that the critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper and the endangered Spotted Greenshank were being pushed to extinction by the loss of wetlands.

“We anticipate the declines will not only continue but become more obvious in other species,” said Nial Moores, a British-born conservationist and director of Birds Korea.

Any NGO doing this? Anyone else doing similar thing?

I have summaries of several large-scale tree-planting programs here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Trees-For-the-Wo… (Scroll down a little - the first section talks about why tree planting is important, and I assume you already know.)

Otherwise, check out the resources here: http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/

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Logging companies replant trees by the thousands all the time. How big are the trees you want to plant? Little short seedlings or bigger trees several feet tall?

If this is a charity project you might want to ask for help from the local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in your area or from some of the Veterans groups, they do this sort of stuff all the time! There might be contractors or landscapers who will volunteer their time for this project - if it is a charity or for the public good.

If it is for your own personal use then hire a landscaper.

Loggers do this type of planting all the time, that is why America has more trees now than 100 years ago!

Great Idea, we could also make the cars out of rubber and that way they would just bounce if they run into something.

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At which point you find that the extra large tyres are heavier than standard ones.

The air in a tyre is not very heavy compared to the tyre (though for safety reasons it does need to be inflated to the right pressure).

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Helium doesn’t really have enough lifting power to make a big difference. To get an average person off the ground would take about 8,000 regular-sized helium balloons. And of course a car weighs much more than a person. Even with giant monster truck tires, you would see little difference. Way to think outside the box though. Keep at it.

Serious answer to this???
Please, the condo complex where I live puts pellets down in the spring supposedly to kill the field mice which come out of the forest behind the houses.I was highly suspect of why the wildlife decreased radically, or looked sick an maimed for weeks afterwards.I took a few pellets and had them tested by a biochemist.It is a derivative of rat poison, when the condo association said it was not,I was taken in front of the Board and given a severe warning, which of course I told them I’d ignore whether they’d fine me or not.
Now, does anyone know what steps IT must take to report this in a legal manner to the WildLife Commission to have them answer for what is being insidiously done?No neighbour wants to help me, because as so many people they care about nothing but their selfish selves, not the critters.Any helpful advice as to whom to contact, what to actively do to save the poor critters around here?

Call your locat US Fish and Wildlfie Service..there are laws against putting poison out where it is uncontrolled and basically any wildlife can eat it. Yes, children are at risk as well. Also if ANY bird eats it, it is a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act..they can be fined and do jail time for each individual bird they kill.

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As a homeowner I would not want mice, but I appreciate your passion, therefore I would say start with the Humane Society or the Dept of Natural Resources…ask them for advice and they should be able to direct you. If you want to contact an attorney it will cost you money but you could pose it as a danger to children who may put the poisonous pellets in their mouth, etc. If you frame the issue as a human concern you may get farther. People are selfish and care about themselves first…pose the issue that way and you will have better success

a small kind of crane uses teargas to ward off its enemies. this crane is found commonly in Asia , America and Africa. when the enemy approaches, the crane sprays the fluid into its eyes. this will cause irritation and pain to the eyes of vulture and falcon (cranes enemies). in the meantime crane escapes.

Sure. You save the water you would otherwise use to flush the toilet. However, we can’t hold it all day long until we go to take shower, right?

Alternatives are not flushing the toilet every time but there is sanitary issues and it could be difficult if there are other occupants sharing the same facilities. More eco friendly toilets have two buttons - one for liquid waste (low flow) and one for solid waste (high flow). They are in the market but since they cost a little more they have limited market share today.

As for urine as fertilizer. It is. However, it has to be diluted before the application or the plant or grass may die. People who have front yard must have experience about yellow or brown spots on the lawn due to the “contribution” from neighbors’ dogs.

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If you mean instead of the toilet, and then flushing the toilet, then yes, it would obviously conserve water.

The best thing for the enviroment though? It would actually be to urinate outside, especially in your garden. You wouldn’t believe all the truely valuable things in ones urine.

People often forget just how nature works. They all concintrate on the fact that animal manure is good for the garden, and to make pastures grow. Urine is equally as important.

So actually the most enviromentally friendly thing to do would be to urinate in ones vegtable garden, or orchard, and skip putting synthetic, oil based fertilizers on the garden.

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for a much better environment than peeing in the shower…
if u got a garden outside your house…
pee at the plants better… never waste good fertilizer..
see…
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/10/…
http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/20…
white polar bear..
thanks for highlighting the “diluted urine”
but i still think it’s not a hard job to diluted urine before we make them useful.. right?
infect it’s better to dilute it in a container in in-house toilet.
than just pee outside the house..(since we still need to flush the toilet after we pee..)
since “human urine” (not dog urine) are good fertilizer i don’t see why can’t we make good use of it.
we can have our beautiful garden while we save money buying fertilizer.
who know.., maybe u can even grow your very own cabbage for food too..! it’s bettter than eating cabbage grown with others human urine fertilizer…!

I assume you mean a propane grill, right?

It is actually not that bad, compared to driving a petrol vehicle, but it’s not as ‘clean’ as many would say propane is. In fact, it is actually better to use charcoal.

Charcoal burns slowly, so it creates less carbon dioxide than propane which, if you notice, burns pretty fast (it being a gas); it also by it’s very chemical nature contains less carbon per unit than propane, so overall it creates substantially less carbon dioxide per hour of use than burning propane gas.

And if you just post “GLOBAL WARMING ISNT REAL DUHH,” the usual drivel, you’ll just look like even more of an idiot and basically prove my point there are no credible AGW skeptic organizations

Skeptics/deniers, please give me the source of your information.

You’re not going to get a good answer because there is no such thing as a REUPUTABLE source. When thousands of scientists (IPCC) all agree that global warming exists its pretty cut and dry at that point.

There’s no one out there that is a reputable global warming skeptic because to be a skeptic of GW automatically means you’re not reputable.

Time for this country to face facts and start to take some action.

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I’m at work and I don’t have my sources linked to my work computer. But I know I have looked at the main NASA website and found articles about their research of how cloud cover effects the planet. I’ve looked at graphs and papers that show the oceans actually cooling and not warming up. I’ve paid close attention to the jet stream patterns this year. I also read some papers about sun spots and their cycles. None of the papers and articles I’ve read were funded by Exxon-Mobil.

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I am sure you couldn’t provide a source for AGW that isn’t government funded. Money is money. Whatever money wants, money gets. If the government looks to fund global warming, and clearly it doesn’t fund things that don’t suggest global warming, then it funnels money to those pushing that agenda. Your contention that Exxon is the only biased source reveals your bias.

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Big oil is going to get their money regardless of the restrictions government’s assert. No matter what, oil will soon be depleted or rendered obsolete. It’s companies like GE who are truly bias. They have a huge interest in AGW being real. Don’t ya just love their energy efficient light bulbs. Who’s really bias here? Who has the most reason to be? How much has federal funding increased for climate science in the last 20 years? Skeptics bias?

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