The Caota Sand Dunes (草漯沙丘) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) is a site that “everyone must visit once in their lifetime,” Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) has said.
Cheng’s administration this year spent NT$37 million (US$1.25 million) on a footpath along the coast for visitors to the dunes, which have been listed as the city’s first geological park, and the third in the nation.
The Caota dunes are up to 15m tall and extend 8.1km along the coast in a northeast-southwest direction.
Photo: Cheng Shu-ting, Taipei Times
Environmental conservation group the Taiwan Environmental Information Association has listed the dunes as one of nine coastal sites nationwide that warrant preservation.
After a blogger read about the association’s listing of the dunes and wrote about it earlier this year, visitors flocked to the site to take photographs.
The first section of the footpath opened on June 16 near Chaoyin N Road, the city said, adding that it hopes to complete work on the second section — near Jhongsiao Road — by the end of the year.
Speaking at the opening ceremony for the footpath on Tuesday, Cheng said Taoyuan had applied for recognition of the site as a geological park in 2018, and that the application was approved this month.
The only other geological parks in the nation are in Matsu and Yunlin County’s Gukeng Township (古坑).
Recognition as a geological park would help conserve a 284 hectare section of Taoyuan’s coastline between Guanyin and Dayuan (大園) districts, Cheng said.
The area would be split into three sections from a conservation management perspective, comprising a core area with fully formed dunes, a restoration section and a regular section, he said.
The core section would be accessible only for research and environmental education, to preserve its form, while the regular section would be open to the public and be accessible for recreation purposes, he said.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
RSS