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

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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