Dr Nial Moores, Nationwide Director of Birds Korea
Birdwatching and birding are rising quickly in reputation right here within the ROK, with now hundreds of individuals having fun with birds each month. There are prone to be a number of causes for this, past the apparent one which birding is a superb strategy to expertise and higher perceive the world round us. Fortunately, we (as in Birds Korea) have performed an essential position on this progress of curiosity – via our fieldwork, teaching programs and on-line presence and extra just lately via our translation of the Merlin birdwatching app, and our position since 2019 in serving to to construct use of eBird within the ROK.
In solely the primary 10 months of this yr, over 1,200 customers within the ROK have already submitted greater than 20,000 checklists to the eBird platform, producing a mass of rely and distributional information. This compares to Birds Korea annual evaluations within the 2000s, which had contributions from solely 40 observers again in 2002 and 139 observers in 2010 – a tenth of the variety of observers contributing to eBird now!
Our intention, after all, stays to assist eBird develop additional right here within the ROK. For a lot of customers, eBird could be little greater than a digital diary, a straightforward strategy to make and share checklists. Its actual energy, nonetheless, is in its scale and design, permitting evidence-based mapping of species throughout continents and over time the strong evaluation of standing and developments by anybody who desires to make use of the information.
In direction of that finish, Dr Ha Jungmoon and myself had been invited by the Cornell lab (liable for eBird, Merlin and the net Birds of the World) to symbolize the ROK at a two-day Asia regional eBird assembly held in Incheon on October Twenty eighth and twenty ninth. Along with 4 or 5 core workers from the Cornell Lab, this assembly was additionally attended by some genuinely inspirational representatives from India, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia – in addition to two of our shut colleagues from the Hanns Seidel Basis (Korea workplace).
At our suggestion, this pioneering Asia regional assembly was then adopted by our second ever home eBird assembly, with logistical assist very kindly offered by the EAAFP Secretariat. This smaller assembly was attended formally by Ian Davies from the Cornell lab; 4 of the present volunteer reviewers (myself, Dr Ha Jungmoon, Leslie Hurteau and Gina Yi); three new staff members – Track Heung-Min (from Tweet-Tweet in Ulsan), “Fran” Kim and Kwan Woochan; and Kim Eojin on zoom.
A spread of points had been mentioned – from the necessity for extra translation assist; extra sound recordings, and annotations, to make the Merlin Sound App extra helpful; and the necessity for a stronger nationwide staff, to assist overview extra shortly and to speak extra clearly in regards to the platform and the way we will use it to do the issues we’d like it to do.
At the very least one particular occasion was additionally proposed through the Asian regional assembly which we sadly had no time to debate on the nationwide assembly: a “Bunting Depend Week” (maybe in February 2026) to slot in with a wider all-winter regional initiative throughout a lot of Asia being coordinated by the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society. This would possibly present a superb alternative to reveal simply how essential the ROK is for a number of bunting species – does anybody know of anyplace else with greater numbers of Rustic and Yellow-throated Buntings in winter than the ROK?
