“It’s like sitting next to someone you know who’s dying. Devastating.”

South Korea used to have the most important feeding ground for long distance migratory water birds of the East Asian Australasian Flyway. More than half a million birds depended on the worms and molluscs in an area of tidal mudflat five times the size of Manhattan Island. In 2006, a gigantic Saemangeum sea wall isolated the habitat from the open sea. Ann Jones hears what happened from bird conservationists Spike Millington, Nial Moores and Nicola Crockford of Birdlife International.

Image: Great knot at Saemangeum, 2006, credit: Nial Moores/Birds Korea