A Formosan black bear was found dead and buried two weeks ago near a remote industrial road in Nantou County. Injuries were apparent on its head and chest. Authorities knew it was roaming the area in Sinyi Township (信義) from data provided by a tracker before it went mute, although the device was not found with the remains.
The media were quick to pick up the story, made more sensational by the bear’s ill-fated backstory. The same bear had been trapped and released at least five times before, possibly more, based on scars ringing its legs. Last year, reporters began calling it the “Dongmao Mountain (東卯山) bear” after it was found ensnared in wildlife traps twice in the span of two months on the Taichung mountain. Just last month it was trapped, rehabilitated and released once again, only to meet its ultimate demise a few weeks later.
From interviews with local residents and police, a likely although unconfirmed scenario began to take shape. Some hunters in the area reportedly take their scooters out at night, using the headlights to illuminate eyes of their prey moving through the dark woods. This method has inevitably led to mistakes, with hunters accidentally shooting protected animals, other hunters or illegal loggers, sometimes fatally. One resident theorized that the bear was shot in this manner and its tracker destroyed to cover up evidence of the accidental killing.
Arrests were announced on Friday of men surnamed Tien (田) and Ma (馬). Their homemade shotguns, bullets, mobile phones and other items were seized, and they were each released on NT$30,000 bail. Some headlines on the arrests boldly proclaimed: “The murderers have been found,” or deemed the men “heartless.”
The death of the beleaguered bear is tragic, especially considering its past run-ins with humans. Still, details of this case must not be mistaken as representative of all hunting practices in Taiwan.
Ever since it was virtually banned in the 1989 Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), indigenous people have been fighting to regain the right to hunt — an essential element of traditional practice. Amendments in 2004 gave some concessions for cultural or ritualistic purposes, regulated by strict rules. The issue made it to the Constitutional Court, and then last year to the Council of Grand Justices, which ruled against provisions requiring at least five days’ notice and prior notice of how many animals of which type were to be hunted. It did not overturn rules that require hunters to use homemade guns, which advocates criticize as dangerous.
Decades of stigmatization have turned indigenous hunters into convenient scapegoats for wildlife population declines, despite significant evidence that subsistence hunting has little impact on animal populations — especially compared with other culprits like industry and habitat destruction. Yet when a story like this comes around, the focus again shifts to the “heartless” hunters.
At the same time, few would defend methods such as the one that might have led to the Dongmao bear’s demise. Community elders themselves would be the first to condemn them, as they are by no means representative of the larger hunting community that upholds methods more connected to traditional knowledge. The debate around steel-jaw traps also seems to have been subsumed into the hunting question, without acknowledging their widespread use for pest control by farmers.
There is no easy answer to this problem, or else it would have been found already. Hunting traditions change with the times, just as wildlife populations rise and fall, requiring a flexible approach that centers on indigenous voices. The best way forward is to maintain sustained dialogue with communities, but this can only be achieved by respecting the rights of everyone involved and refusing to frame the problem as between two diametrically opposed interests.
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