The Forestry Bureau on Monday signed a cooperation agreement with a local wildlife conservation society to establish eastern Taiwan’s first large-scale wild animal rescue center.
The agreement was signed by Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城), Forestry Bureau Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) and WildOne Wildlife Conservation Association president Chi Meng-jou (綦孟柔).
Huang said that the public and private organizations would work together to establish the wildlife rescue center on Aug. 15.
The establishment of the center is of great importance for Taiwan’s promotion of wildlife conservation, because eastern Taiwan is home to a wide variety of species, Huang said.
The nation’s seven existing government-designated wildlife rescue centers are in Taipei, Taichung, Nantou County and Penghu County, as well as southern Taiwan, the association said.
When an injured wild animal is found in eastern Taiwan, it has to be sent either to a wildlife rehabilitation facility set up by the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology in the south or Taipei Zoo in the north, Huang said, adding that the establishment of the new center would help boost Taiwan’s rescue rate of wild animals.
A total of 576 endangered pangolins and other wild animals on the verge of extinction have been rescued around Taiwan over the past five years, and 304 of them have been returned to the wild after being treated, Forestry Bureau statistics showed.
The number of rescued animals in Hualien and Taitung counties rose from 143 in 2015 to 319 last year, the data showed.
The public-private partnership model for the new center was emulated from advanced nations, Lin said.
Chi said the collaboration would make people care about ecology.
In the first phase, the bureau would provide NT$3.6 million (US$122,922) in funds, while the association would raise NT$3.65 million to establish the center, Lin said.
In the next phase, the bureau would continue to provide financial support for the center’s operations, he added.
The center would initially be run by two veterinarians and more staff would be added later, Chi said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS