Welcome to a War on Wildlife podcast – well, a war on wildlife podcast with a difference. My name is Charlie Moores and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t record over Skype and I would be discussing biodiversity or campaigns affecting wildlife, but like pretty much everyone else at the moment I’m thinking about Covid-19, the coronavirus crisis that is sweeping the world, and wondering how it might be affecting my conservationist brother, Dr Nial Moores, who for the last twenty years has been living in Busan, a city in South Korea (or the Republic of Korea as it’s more properly known).

I’ve spoken with Nial for a number of podcasts – on biodiversity loss and wetland reclamation in the Yellow Sea eco-region for example – but the RoK was one of the first countries to be hit by Covid-19 after it spread out from China. Obviously I’ve been concerned about him, and we’ve been in regular contact – but his perspective on the reaction to the crisis has been so interesting (Nial speaks Korean, is married to a Korean, and has totally immersed himself in his adopted home) I thought this time we’d record the conversation for a podcast…

Dr Nial Moores | Coronavirus in South Korea – a personal perspective
March 2020

Dr Nial Moores talking with me from Busan, South Korea in mid-March 2020. If you’d like to learn more about the conservation work he and his Birds Korea colleagues are doing in the ROK please go to the Birds Korea website, and for updated news on bird sightings and field identification please go to the Birds Korea Blog.

Thank you very much for listening – and stay well…