On a typical night in October last year, a group of young people lined up on a country road in the Tashanpei (大山背) mountain area in Hsinchu County’s Hengshan Township (橫山), armed with nets and observation boxes. They swung the beams of their flashlights back and forth across the tarmac as if tracking a fugitive.
Suddenly, their beams picked out a Rana sauteri, more commonly known as Sauter’s brown frog in Taiwan. The tiny creature was stunned, frozen into stillness by the bright lights.
The five-member group, led by Shih Fen-ru (施芬如), a volunteer from the Hsinchu branch of the Society of Wilderness (SOW), crept carefully toward the creature. Just as Shih was stretching out her hand to capture the amphibian, a truck roared past and the group instinctively turned away from the vehicle.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY SHIH FEN-RU
When they turned back, they saw only a squashed frog, plastered to the road with its legs splayed out, looking more like a freshly pressed flower than an animal.
With no time to mourn the frog’s untimely demise, the volunteers immediately spotted another fat and gravid brown frog. Shih grabbed it and deftly transferred it to an observation box.
When the group had collected a number of the frogs, they carried the animals to a stream flowing 6m below the road and released them there to breed.
Last year marked the launch of the Hsinchu branch of the SOW’s brown frog protection campaign, on Shih’s initiative.
Shih, an associate professor at Ta-Hwa Institute of Technology who joined the SOW three years ago, said the Tashanpei area is a local study site.
In field study trips in 2008, Shih discovered big challenges facing the brown frogs living in the region because of a combination of factors including the species’ particular breeding habits, habitat fragmentation and the use of concrete slabs in slope and river bank protection work.
The Rana sauteri family is a woodland amphibian native to Taiwan. The species can be seen in large numbers only during its breeding season, when males and females converge in rivers and streams to mate.
“The creature’s reproduction tends to take place en masse, with large numbers of frogs traveling to streams simultaneously on particular evenings from September to November,” Shih said. “Their migration looks like they’re going to a group wedding.”
For the frogs living in the Tashanpei area, the road to mating is especially difficult and treacherous, Shih said.
“They have to cross a 5-to-8m-wide country road in twilight or poor light, jump a 90cm-high roadside barrier and then nosedive 6m to a concrete slope protection before reaching the breeding ground on the river bed,” she said. “Along the way, many frogs are run over by passing cars and trucks. During one field trip in 2008, I saw nearly 100 dead frogs, which prompted me to propose a ‘brown frog escort across love road’ campaign to the SOW Hsinchu branch.”
More than 200 volunteers, including SOW members, high-tech professionals from the nearby Hsinchu Science Park, school teachers and students, took part in the program last autumn, taking shifts to police the road.
“Each evening, four or five volunteers were assigned to patrol the route, advising drivers to slow down to avoid hitting the frogs as well as catching the creatures and taking them down to the river to mate,” Shih said.
Among the volunteers was Yeh Chin-ching (葉晶京), who at the time was a sixth grader and who is now a student at Sanmin Junior High School.
She spent her summer vacation completing more than 20 illustrations for a book, titled Jump, Sauteri! which was co-authored by Yeh’s mother and several other SOW volunteers to promote the campaign.
The book features the story of two male brown frogs — Sau Sau and Teri Teri — who engage in a race to see who can reach a stream where female frog Nana is waiting for marriage.
The two frogs hop neck-and-neck, competing to reach the stream first. Unfortunately, Teri Teri is run over by a truck while crossing the road, but Sau Sau manages to survive the risky road-crossing, his fate hanging in the balance when he jumps from the barrier wall into the stream below.
Shih said the SOW is recruiting volunteers to tell the story of Sau Sau and Teri Teri to elementary schoolchildren around Taiwan to instill in them awareness of environmental protection and wildlife conservation.
Noting that frogs are an important indicator of environmental health, Shih said the campaign is not just for the well-being of the species, but also symbolizes concern for natural ecology and biodiversity.
“We hope our campaign will bring attention to the poor planning and poor design of riverbank protection that is prevalent in Taiwan,” she added.
The installation of continuous concrete roadside barriers along mountain roads has fragmented the natural habitats of many wildlife species, which has hindered the foraging and migration patterns of small animals, she said.
The planning of infrastructure construction in mountainous areas lacks vision in terms of environmental protection, Shih added.
Such projects do not need environmental impact assessments and are not subject to strict supervision by environmental and conservation experts, Shih said.
“We hope our escort campaign will bring government attention to these issues and that the Hsinchu County Government will erect clear road signs to remind motorists that brown frogs will be crossing the road in October,” she said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated