The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin is facing extinction as a result of pollution and over-fishing, researchers said yesterday.
The researchers said that if the government did not take prompt action to protect these coast-hugging cetaceans, they may well follow in the wake of China’s Baiji dolphins, which were in 2007 confirmed to be extinct.
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins are listed as “near threatened” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which states that the population has been continuously decreasing.
A distinctive group of these dolphins living in Taiwan’s coastal waters numbers less than 100 and is instead listed by the IUCN as “critically endangered,” just one step above extinction. Researchers want their habitat, which spans between Miaoli and Tainan County, to be designated as a “priority habitat.”
Aided by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), the researchers, along with environmental groups, yesterday called on the government to ensure that this dolphin group would not become extinct in Taiwan.
“It’s our shared reliance on coastal waters that makes these dolphins so vulnerable,” said Peter Ross, a research scientist with the Canadian government’s Institute of Ocean Sciences.
Questions were raised over the government’s models, which said that the Taiwanese dolphin group could be sustained by simply keeping 45 to 110 of them alive.
The government should instead aim to dramatically increase those numbers, said Elisabeth Slooten, associate professor of zoology at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
Researchers also expressed concern over the government’s plan to expand a science park in Erlin (二林), Changhua County. The plan calls for discharging the science park’s wastewater 3km from the Changhua coast — directly into the center of what researchers say is the dolphin group’s habitat.
The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins are especially vulnerable to changes in their environment, researchers said. Their lifespan is between 30 and 40 years and the males and females only reach sexual maturity at 13 and 10 years of age respectively.
In response, officials from the Council of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) promised to prioritize the issue and minimize the impact caused by the Erlin science park.
Yeh Jiunn-horng (葉俊宏), director-general of Comprehensive Planning at the EPA, said requirements for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) of coastal developments that may affect the habitat already include a review of the potential impact on the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins.
Earlier this week, the Executive Yuan’s Task Force for Maritime Affairs, chaired by Vice Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫), also promised to increase funding for the protection of and added research into the dolphins.
However, Ross said that working with a group that unsuccessfully tried to protect the Baiji dolphins showed that speed was of the utmost importance.
He said that if the issue were not dealt with hastily, Taiwan’s dolphins might soon be extinct.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS