Wildlife including the yellow-throated marten and the northern goshawk has begun appearing near Dohak-dong Valley in Palgongsan National Park after illegal structures used for about 70 years as an unauthorized prayer site were removed.
The Korea National Park Service, an agency under the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, said on the 25th that monitoring with motion-sensor cameras confirmed a variety of wildlife using the valley after the prayer site was cleared.
The area near Dohak-dong Valley on Palgongsan, in the Dong-gu district of Daegu, had been used as an outdoor prayer site for 70 years. The site held 92 illegal structures installed by shamans, including sunshades, steel bridges, candle boxes and altars. Working with related agencies, the service prompted occupants to remove structures and vacate the site voluntarily, then demolished the remaining illegal facilities. About 356 tons of waste, including scrap concrete, were disposed of during the restoration.
The service then carried out cleanup work in the valley, including restoring small natural stones that had been used to build altars. It also installed an unmanned guidance system at the valley entrance and designated the area for regular patrols to check for any recurrence of illegal activity.
Motion-sensor cameras monitoring the local ecosystem from June to August recorded a total of 17 wildlife species moving through or resting in the valley. The yellow-throated marten and the northern goshawk, both designated Class II endangered wildlife, also returned. The yellow-throated marten is a mammal of the weasel family in the order Carnivora, and the northern goshawk is a bird of the hawk family in the order Accipitriformes.
The service views this as a positive sign of recovering natural conditions and plans to continue ecological monitoring to manage the restored area.
"After we demolished the illegal structures and returned the damaged valley to nature, we confirmed that a variety of wildlife is using it," said Joo Dae-young, chairman of the Korea National Park Service. "We will continue to restore damaged areas of national parks and manage them systematically so that nature can recover on its own."
Since a full survey of illegal facilities in rivers and valleys in March, the government has run a grace period for voluntary removal to encourage cleanup. Of the roughly 90,000 illegal facilities identified as of July, about 13,000 have been cleared. The government plans to continue encouraging voluntary removal while pursuing cleanup under a zero-tolerance policy, combining administrative procedures such as vicarious execution for facilities whose owners refuse to remove them.
