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Korea¡¯s Dokdo islets are not merely valuable fishing grounds but also home to a rich ecosystem including hundreds of birds, plants, insects and marine creatures, some of them on the endangered species list. A government survey found 107 kinds of birds including highly endangered falcons, 49 kinds of plant, 93 kinds of insect, 160 kinds of marine plants and several hundreds of marine invertebrates there.
The Environment Ministry on Monday announced the findings of an ecological survey carried out between April last year and February this year.
One remarkable finding was a huge population of some 10,000 black-tailed gulls which practically own the islets besides some 600 fork-tailed petrels.
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Some of the many creatures sharing Dokdo¡¯s rich ecosystem (clockwise from left): black-tailed gulls, arctic daisies, sea anemones and fan-shaped coral.
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Researchers were struck by the abundance of plants not native to the islets. Among the 49 kinds of plants they discovered, 19 originate elsewhere. ¡°Ulleung Island and Dokdo were never linked with the mainland; they are oceanic islands created when the seafloor was pushed up above the water, and they play a very important role in plant research,¡± said Hyun Jin-o of the Northeast Asia Plant Institute who carried out the botanical survey. ¡°We need to make sure that foreign plant varieties do not invade Dokdo to protect its plant ecosystem.¡±
There were also disappointments. Historical records say that some 30,000-50,000 Steller¡¯s sea lions were caught in Dokdo every year during Japanese colonial rule, but researchers found no surviving members of the species. ¡°They seem to have been wiped out by overhunting,¡± said Dr. Won Chang-man of the National Institute of Environmental Research. Nor were there any seals, which had occasionally been reported there.
¡°To restore the population of sea lions, we need to come up with measures to curb fishing and other activities that didn¡¯t take place in the past,¡± the ministry said. There have been no recent sightings of the highly endangered sea lions anywhere in Korea, though seals, which are also endangered, sometimes get trapped in fishing nets off Gangwon Province.
¡°We surveyed the ecosystems of Ulleung Island and Dokdo in 2002 but not nearly as thoroughly. This is the first time we¡¯ve carried out a survey in nine sectors and all four season,¡± said Dr. Kim Jung-hyun with the National Institute of Environmental Research, who led the project. He added the survey will provide the groundwork for annual inspections of the islets¡¯ ecosystem.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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