The Taedong River estuary Important Bird Area is an 11,500 ha site in southern

South Pyongan Province South Pyongan Province (Phyŏngannamdo; ) is a province of North Korea. The province was formed in 1896 from the southern half of the former Pyongan Province, remained a province of Korea until 1945, then became a province of North Korea. Its ca ...

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

, where the

Taedong River The Taedong River (Chosŏn'gŭl: ) is a large river in North Korea. The river rises in the Rangrim Mountains of the country's north where it then flows southwest into Korea Bay at Namp'o.Suh, Dae-Sook (1987) "North Korea in 1986: Strengthening ...

meets the

Yellow Sea The Yellow Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean located between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula, and can be considered the northwestern part of the East China Sea. It is one of four seas named after common colour terms ...

. It has been identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) because it supports populations of various

waterbird A water bird, alternatively waterbird or aquatic bird, is a bird that lives on or around water. In some definitions, the term ''water bird'' is especially applied to birds in freshwater ecosystems, although others make no distinction from seabi ...

s. These include

swan geese The swan goose (''Anser cygnoides'') is a large goose with a natural breeding range in inland Mongolia, northernmost China, and the Russian Far East. It is migratory and winters mainly in central and eastern China. Vagrant birds are encounter ...

mute swan The mute swan (''Cygnus olor'') is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurosiberia, and (as a rare winter visitor) the far north of Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, home ...

whooper swan The whooper swan ( /ˈhuːpə(ɹ) swɒn/) (''Cygnus cygnus''), also known as the common swan, pronounced ''hooper swan'', is a large northern hemisphere swan. It is the Eurasian counterpart of the North American trumpeter swan, and the type specie ...

Baikal teal The Baikal teal (''Sibirionetta formosa''), also called the bimaculate duck or squawk duck, is a dabbling duck that breeds in eastern Russia and winters in East Asia. Taxonomy The first formal description of the Baikal teal was by the German ...

Steller's sea-eagle Steller's sea eagle (''Haliaeetus pelagicus''), also known as Pacific sea eagle or white-shouldered eagle, is a very large diurnal bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. It was described first by Peter Simon Pallas in 1811. No subspecies are r ...

red-crowned crane The red-crowned crane (''Grus japonensis''), also called the Manchurian crane or Japanese crane (; the Chinese character '丹' means 'red', '頂/顶' means 'crown' and '鶴/鹤' means 'crane'), is a large East Asian crane among the rarest cran ...

s and Saunders's gulls. The site comprises a range of

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

s including freshwater lakes, salt pans and

rice paddies A paddy field is a flooded field of arable land used for growing semiaquatic crops, most notably rice and taro. It originates from the Neolithic rice-farming cultures of the Yangtze River basin in southern China, associated with pre-Aust ...

. Threats to the IBA include

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

intensification and aquacultural development.

References

Important Bird Areas of North Korea Wetlands of North Korea South Pyongan {{NorthKorea-geo-stub