Strewn with mines and bordered with barbed wire, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea extends in a narrow band about 150 miles long and two and a half miles wide. No permanent structures or settlements exist in the DMZ, and over the past 50 years, only occasional soldiers, observers, and the 225 residents of Daeseong-dong, a little village on the southern border, have been allowed in. Because of this imposed isolation, the politically tense zone is an inadvertent haven for wildlife.
Regions like this, which were once part of a war zone, can ironically sometimes become a no-man's-land where animals and plants flourish free of human interference. Even in countries with no recent conflicts, conservationists are exploring how border zones, which tend to be unpopulated, could be used to preserve wildlife.
