Coastal wetland conservation in Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem: progress and suggestions

Coastal wetland of Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem (YSLME) is of vital importance to migratory birds using the East Asian-Australasian Flyway by providing staging and over-wintering habitats for them. Due to the economic development in the past decades, massive coastal habitats were reclaimed in both China and Korea. Habitat loss was identified as a major transboundary threat to YSLME. Several management actions were proposed to address this transboundary issue in the Strategic Action Plan of YSLME Phase Ⅱ Project. At the same time, ambitious global biodiversity targets aiming at conserving 30% of seas by 2030 (3030 goals) was also adopted. In this paper, the progress of China and Korea in terms of coastal wetland conservation law and regulation framework, coastal wetland protected areas designation, public awareness and international cooperation will be reviewed to reflect the coastal wetland conservation progress in YSLME. The coastal wetland conservation information of North korea was also described briefly. Suggestions for future conservation work were proposed for better addressing the coastal wetland habitat loss problem and achieving 3030 goals. The main achievements are: China and Korea have gradually improved the legal and regulatory systems for coastal wetland conservation, the rapid decline trend of coastal wetland in the early period has been slowed down, more coastal wetland was conserved in recent years, public awareness was embodied in laws and regulations at various level, China and ROK have sustained international cooperation and communication on coastal wetland conservation. Our suggestions for future work are: expand the area of coastal wetland protected areas, protect the ecological corridors of migratory species, strengthen the YSLME coastal wetland protected area network and enhance the data accessibility of Marine Protected Area information.