The Forestry Bureau’s Pingtung office on Friday hosted a workshop on the conservation of the eastern grass owl and the extension of its habitats in Kaohsiung, and Pingtung and Chiayi counties.
Taiwan’s unique indigenous grass owl subspecies is one of six subspecies in East Asia, with populations in the lower reaches of the mountains of southern Taiwan, the office said.
The owl’s habitats largely overlap with extensively populated areas, and habit loss due to agriculture and urban development poses a major threat to its survival, the office said.
Photo: Chen Yan-ting, Taipei Times
Poisoning by agrochemical residues and accidental hunting also pose risks, it added.
Conservation efforts are complicated by a lack of data on the elusive nocturnal bird and little public awareness of the owl’s conservation status, it said.
The bureau in 2018 listed the owl as a subspecies of concern in the short and medium term, it said.
In May, the bureau included it on a list of 22 species and subspecies with nationwide priority conservation status, it said.
Programs to protect the owl include efforts to reverse habitat fragmentation and stop habitat loss, it said.
Additionally, the bureau is offering rewards to farmers who use sustainable methods and make efforts to protect target areas for conservation in their communities, it said.
The bureau’s branch offices in southern Taiwan should strengthen partnerships with researchers and conservation groups to protect the owl, it said.
Hung Hsiao-yu (洪孝宇), a researcher at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, said that a government-funded program to build habitat platforms has achieved some success.
Video evidence shows that owls are occupying 10 of the 21 platforms that were built in southern Taiwan, providing bureau officials with important data on habitat distribution, he said.
Officials should inform farmers in the region that owls are natural predators of mice and that the farmers also benefit from the platforms, he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods