Thirty years of saving endangered insects — now only lawsuits remain

Deep in the mountains of Hoengseong-gun, Gangwon Province, sits the Holocene Ecology Preservation Research Institute. In a row of tanks occupying one corner of the 72,600-square-meter facility, hundreds of giant water bugs — classified as an endangered wild species under Ministry of Environment designation — are being raised in individual isolation. The species is cannibalistic, making separate management of each specimen essential. Staff must supply live fish as feed and monitor water quality and overwintering conditions one by one. With a survival rate of only around 30 percent, continuous observation is indispensable to maintaining a stable population.

Lee Kang-woon, who has studied insects at the institute for nearly three decades, said endangered species are "ecologically vulnerable — once you let go, they can simply disappear." The moment a species is designated as protected, collection and trade are strictly restricted. These are tiny insects that most people have never heard of, yet someone must feed them, breed them, study their physiology and ecology, and keep their populations alive.

The question is who bears responsibility for conservation work that demands so much time and money, and how. The government has designated private specialist institutions as ex-situ conservation centers and assigned them the work, but under Ministry of Environment rules, national subsidies and private co-funding must each cover 50 percent of project costs. Lee argues that requiring private organizations to shoulder half the cost of conservation work that generates no revenue is a structurally unsustainable arrangement.

The dispute has ultimately moved into the courts. After being found guilty in both the first and second trials on criminal charges related to subsidy disbursement, Lee appealed to the Supreme Court on Aug. 19. A separate administrative lawsuit seeking to overturn a subsidy repayment order issued by the Wonju Regional Environment Office is also pending. His defense argues that the actual private co-funding contributed — along with research facilities — must be given full weight, while the environment office maintains that a Board of Audit and Inspection review confirmed improper subsidy disbursement and that the repayment order was issued in accordance with the law.

Lee began his insect research in the 1990s. While working as a reporter at the Dong-A Ilbo, he led a natural-ecology expedition team and witnessed ecosystem destruction firsthand, then went on to study insect taxonomy and ecology. In 1997 he established an ecology learning center — the forerunner of the current Hoengseong institute — and began his insect research in earnest. In 2005, at the Ministry of Environment's invitation, the institute was designated an ex-situ conservation center and threw itself fully into breeding and restoring endangered insects.

The institute's main research subjects include the red-spotted Apollo butterfly, the giant water bug and the small dung beetle. Among these, the restoration of the red-spotted Apollo butterfly has been recognized as a globally unique achievement, featured in the International Union for Conservation of Nature's world restoration case studies. The institute has also published papers in multiple international academic journals, including research on the butterfly's freeze-survival mechanism and antimicrobial peptides.

By 2023, the institute had amassed a collection of approximately 160,000 insect specimens — dried, mounted and catalogued by species and collection site, with the data digitized. "These records are not simply a pile of insects," Lee said. "They show which species lived in which areas and how their populations changed over time."

Among endangered species, however, insects attract particularly little public attention. "When people think of endangered species, they picture conspicuous animals like tigers or polar bears," Lee said. "Insects have been left largely in the realm of researchers."

That does not mean insects play a small role. Dung beetles break down wild animal waste and suppress the overpopulation of other insects such as flies. The giant water bug, as a top predator in aquatic ecosystems, preys on invasive species including American bullfrogs — which is precisely why the institute keeps each one in a separate tank. "If a species at the top of the ecological pyramid like the giant water bug disappears, it affects the entire ecosystem below it," Lee said.

The labor required to keep endangered species alive differs from ordinary animal husbandry. To breed the small dung beetle, the institute needed cattle dung free of pesticides and other contaminants, so it established a pasture of about 33,000 square meters and raised cattle itself. The dung is collected, frozen at minus 30 degrees Celsius to eliminate parasites and other organisms, then thawed and supplied as feed.

Lee compared endangered species to "terminal cancer patients." "Just as a hospital needs doctors, nurses and treatments, bringing a species back from the brink of extinction requires a constant input of specialist personnel and effort," he said.

At the heart of the conflict that has spilled into the courts is the 50-50 funding structure. Private ex-situ conservation centers currently operate under an arrangement in which the government provides half the project cost as a national subsidy once the private institution secures the other half as co-funding. An official at the Wonju Regional Environment Office confirmed the arrangement: "National subsidies are disbursed on a cost-sharing basis in which the government covers 50 percent once a private organization has secured 50 percent in co-funding."

However, the table of standard subsidy rates under the Enforcement Decree of the Subsidy Management Act does not separately specify a fixed national subsidy rate for ex-situ conservation center support projects. The establishment of ex-situ conservation centers is in principle excluded from subsidy eligibility, but support projects funded through the Special Account for Environmental Improvement are carved out as an exception.

Lee argues that this structure fails to reflect the unique nature of endangered-species conservation. Protected species cannot be freely collected or traded, and the institute's focus on conservation has forced it to scale back its ecology education programs, making it difficult to generate independent revenue.

The institute contends that its privately owned 72,600-square-meter site, research and breeding facilities, and Lee's unpaid labor should all be counted as substantive co-funding. Court documents from the appeal show that the appellate court recognized approximately 749.73 million won ($547,000) as co-funding contributed by the institute between 2017 and 2021.

In national research and development projects, in-kind contributions such as participating researchers' labor costs and existing research facilities and equipment are already recognized under an established system. How to assess the long-term facilities and personnel committed to endangered-species conservation as co-funding could therefore become a key point of contention.

The environment office, however, maintains that the public interest value of conservation work and the lawfulness of subsidy disbursement are separate matters. An official at the Wonju Regional Environment Office said the Board of Audit and Inspection review had identified cases in which national subsidies from other grant projects were used to cover co-funding labor costs. The audit findings also included cases in which the amount actually paid during equipment transactions differed from the amount recorded in the books, with some funds subsequently returned.

"We issued a repayment order for the amounts identified as improperly disbursed in the audit," the official said. "Holocene filed an administrative lawsuit contesting the order as unjust, and we are currently responding to that."

The defense did not dispute the court's finding that some subsidies were used for purposes other than those originally applied for. The central issue, it said, is how much weight should be given — when determining the scope of criminal liability — to the fact that substantial private co-funding was in practice contributed in the course of a private specialist taking on public-interest work the state should have performed.

Hyeon Yong-seon, an attorney at Daeryuk Aju Law Firm, said the appellate court had acknowledged that Lee's side had in fact contributed a significant amount of co-funding. "The question of whether the entire subsidy received can be treated as fraud simply because the co-funding was not provided in the agreed manner is something that needs to be decided by the Supreme Court," he said. He also raised a broader policy concern: "There is also the question of whether it is appropriate to apply the subsidy law as strictly to this situation — where a private party is performing work the state should be doing — as it would be to an ordinary commercial project."

As the legal battle drags on, the research itself is unraveling. Lee said that for years he has been unable to properly continue research he had spent years preparing, consumed instead by responding to audits and court proceedings. Follow-up research on the red-spotted Apollo butterfly has also stalled since he filed patents on earlier findings. "For five years I could not continue my research because of the trial," he said. "There is a lot of research I had nearly ready for publication that I was never able to finish."

The more immediate problem is the living specimens. Lee said the dung beetles being bred at the institute are now "on the verge of dying off." Even a brief lapse in management, he warned, could wipe out the entire population.

The giant water bug is now the only endangered species at the institute that can be reliably observed in stable condition. About 600 individuals are kept in separate enclosures, each receiving live fish feed and housed alone to prevent cannibalism.

Management of the museum displaying insects collected from across the country has in effect been suspended. The museum, research facilities and specimen collections built up over decades remain intact, but finding the personnel and institutional support needed to maintain them and carry the research forward is a challenge that has yet to be resolved.

This kind of research is also difficult to hand off to another researcher on short notice. "Insect-related majors are disappearing from universities," Lee said. "How many people would be willing to secure a site and facilities this large and start this kind of work all over again?"

"The very fact of keeping endangered species alive without losing them is itself a conservation achievement," Lee said. "Because they are living creatures, once you take them on, you cannot simply stop midway." The giant water bugs still being fed one by one in a corner of the institute stand as a quiet testament to the unresolved challenges facing endangered-species conservation policy in South Korea.