I lost a thousand, but I opened up the mountain goat passage.Because of quarantine?

[Anchor]
The African swine fever barrier was cited as the main cause of the herd death last winter, but the government says it is still too early to remove it altogether.

However, the YTN Data Lab analyzed the vicinity of Seoraksan National Park, where many mountain goat bodies were found, and found that there were few "pig farms" that needed fences.

Reporter Jang Ah-young reports.

[Reporter]
A first-class endangered mountain goat that lost more than a thousand lives last winter.

The YTN Data Lab analyzed that the fence acted as the "last blow" to the exhausted mountain goat based on the right to act in winter.

The Ministry of Environment also acknowledged that there is a fence in the background of the mass death of goats, and decided to increase the 4-meter-wide passageway for goats to enter and exit Mt. Seorak this winter.

But it's not enough to prevent death.

This is because the total length of the 30 passages is 120m, which is only 0.2% of the total 56km fence surrounding Seoraksan National Park.

[Park Young-chul/Professor of Kangwon National University's School of Forest and Environmental Sciences] There's a fence (from a mountain goat's point of view). Then I'll walk for a long time. with a deep dip in the eye I walked a long way through the hole (partial opening passage). If you have a lot of food in front of the point where you broke through, you can live, but if there is no food outside, there is also....]

If you overlap with the map where the dead mountain goat was found, there are many sections where the passage is not installed at all.

Nevertheless, the government will not remove the passage altogether,
The first reason for
is quarantine.

[Kim Jeong-ju / Head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' Disease Control Division: An outbreak of ASF (African Swine Fever) in China in 2018 killed about 150 million people. As a result, the price of pigs jumped by about 60%. And even now, there are many (ASF) in Thailand and the Philippines nearby....]

Then, is the fence playing a role in preventing infection properly?

In 2019, when the African swine fever spread frighteningly from the north, wild boar infections continued to descend south even after the fence was installed, and this year, pig farms in Gyeongbuk were affected.

On the other hand, there have been no wild boars or farmers infected in the past three years in the Seoraksan area, where mountain goats have been killed in droves.

In addition, there are few pig farms themselves that need to be protected by fences around Seoraksan National Park.

There are only three places within a 10km radius of the point where the mountain passage is opened, and two places within a 10km radius of the point where it is not opened.

Pig farmers say they wanted more farm-oriented quarantine than the wide-area fence that surrounds the national park.

[Choi Jae-hyuk / Head of Policy Planning Department of the Korea Don Association: It cost us 180 billion won to build the entire wide-area fence, right? It is said that it costs about 25 million won to 30 million won to completely look around (a farm) with an iron plate. If it's 5,000 farms nationwide, it's about 150 billion won even if it's 30 million won each.]

Experts also point out that the fence may have played a role in slowing the spread of infectious diseases in the early stages, but now that we are in the middle of the year, the quarantine method should also be changed.

[Cho Ho-sung / Professor of Veterinary Medicine at Chonbuk National University] If the initial purpose was to stop the wild boar from going south, there is no role because it has already gone south.... If you can prevent transmission well on the farm and make it so that you don't have direct contact with the pigs, you have the characteristic that it doesn't happen.]

A government that does not intend to fix the fence even though more than a thousand mountain goats have been killed.

Another harsh winter is approaching for the barely surviving goat, but the Ministry of Environment is in a position to see the effect of the '4m passage' until next year.

I'm YTN's Jang Ayoung.



Data Analysis and Visualization: Ham Hyung-gun Kim Byung-wook

Design: Ji Kyung-yoon
Edit
video: Han Soo-min



Data Source List:

1. Where ASF-infected farms occurred: Government/local government, 'pigs and people'

2. Point of discovery of ASF infected wild boar: National Wildlife Disease Management Agency, Ministry of Environment

3. Location of Handon Farm near Seoraksan National Park: Gangwon-do data on the relevant municipalities

4. Mt. Seoraksan Mountain Passage Point: Ministry of Environment
Data on the discovery point of mountain dead bodies in
5. National Heritage Administration, Ministry of Environment, and Rep. Lee Ki-heon's office

6.African Swine Fever Blocking Wide-area Fence SHP File: Ministry of Environment, Rep. Lee Ki-heon's office

7. Seoraksan National Park Border SHP File: Public Data Portal

8. Metropolitan City and municipal administrative boundary file: Public data portal, geo-service web (GEOSERVICE-WEB)