It is indeed ironic that military bases and no-go zones and the like -- what one might think of as both highly dangerous locations and emblematic of death -- are often refuges for life. Thus, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal here in Denver is a major bald eagle nesting ground and wildlife preserve (despite having been a chemical weapons and pesticide manufacturing plant). And, similarly, the Rocky Flats site, where nuclear weapons were built, is also on tap as a wildlife refuge.

The fact is, if you take explicit and backed-by-lethal-force steps to keep humans out of an area, wildlife will tend to survive and flourish.

Thus, the DMZ between North and South Korea -- heavily mined and under constant scrutiny by both sides for decades -- is a last refuge for much of the wildlife indigenous to that peninsula. And there are concerns that if the two Koreas begin to make nice to each other, that the rapaciously capitalistic South and the protest-and-die North might simply carve up the territory -- literally.

This natural barrier traverses wetlands, rice paddies, prairies, hills, forests and mountains for more than 150 miles. Enclosed by barbed wire and left virtually untouched since it was created in 1953, the zone has become a haven for animals, birds and plants that are seldom seen elsewhere on the peninsula.
Migratory birds, including the endangered black-faced spoonbill and the white-naped and red-crowned cranes, fly in and out, oblivious to land barriers. Rare animals like the Asiatic black bear, the Eurasian lynx, goral antelopes - and maybe even the tiger - make this area their year-round home.
But these days, thousands of South Koreans pass every week through an eastern corridor to a resort in North Korea; on the western side, a new highway and a railroad linking the two sides have been built.
"The DMZ is the last major vestige of Korea's natural heritage," said Kim Ke Chung, a professor at the Center for BioDiversity Research at Penn State and chairman of the DMZ Forum, an organization based in the United States that is dedicated to preserving the zone. "It's probably the only good thing to come out of the Korean War and cold war. So we have to preserve this as a nature reserve."

(via BoingBoing)

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