Police are taking steps to prevent the poaching of land crabs in Tainan’s Taijiang National Park to ensure that the crustaceans can reproduce, the National Police Agency (NPA) said on Friday.
The NPA’s Seventh Special Corps said in a statement that it would initiate patrols at the park as the breeding season for Cardisoma carnifex, the largest land crab species in Taiwan, is from July to August every year.
During the two months, female land crabs carry their eggs from the windbreak near Chengsi Menghuan Pond (城西夢幻湖) to the beach after sunset to lay them in the water, the Seventh Special Corps said, adding that it is a potentially lethal route as they could get run over by vehicles or caught by people and cooked.
Photo courtesy of a reader
It said it would control traffic on the road on Cingcaolun Bank (青草崙堤防) to keep the land crabs safe at night.
People who catch and hunt land crabs in national parks face a fine of up to NT$1,000 for contravening the National Park Act (國家公園法), and can be detained or sentenced to up to one year in prison for if they cause serious damage, Seventh Special Corps said.
In related news, two local land crab protection volunteers wrote on social media earlier this week that they were dismayed at some people’s lack of understanding with regards to ecological conservation.
Chuang Chih-hsun (莊智巽) wrote on Facebook that he and his brother Chuang Chih-shan (莊智善) were on their way back from a stint watching over the land crabs on Tuesday when they bumped into two migrant workers with a bag of more than 100 land crabs they had caught to share with their friends.
The brothers were watching over land crabs outside the park along the Yanshui River (鹽水溪), as the crabs are not legally protected there, as they are inside the park.
Chuang Chih-hsun said that it was a hard sight to see, as he and his brother have been devoted to protecting land crabs for more than a decade under their parents’ guidance.
“While we were saving crabs that might have been killed by cars, you made a beeline for the estuary where they laid their eggs. While we saved 10-plus crabs, you caught more than 100 to eat,” he wrote.
Despite their frustration, the Chuang brothers said they would continue their work.
The local agriculture bureau said that it can only try to persuade people that it is unethical to catch land crabs if they are caught outside a national park, because the crabs are not a protected species.
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