A project to remove stray dogs from sensitive habitats in central Taiwan is to begin next month, in tandem with an initiative encouraging local residents to spay and neuter their pets, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Tuesday.
The project is to focus on nine hotspot areas for leopard cat conservation in Taichung, Miaoli County and Nantou County, Department of Animal Welfare administrative section Director Cheng Chu-ching (鄭祝菁) said in a telephone interview.
After discussions with relevant organizations and reviewing proposals from local governments, the project is expected to begin in the middle of next month, Cheng said, adding that details would be adjusted as needed moving forward.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
This year, NT$25 million (US$775,575) has been allocated for the project, including ecological monitoring and a stray dog population tally, she said.
However, Cheng also emphasized that relocation is a last resort, second to population control.
“It is extremely important to speak with owners of free-roaming dogs ... to convey the importance of desexing, or else they will continue to multiply and it will be impossible to solve the problem,” she said.
Pet dogs near the designated zones must be registered, desexed and cannot be free-roaming, department Director-General Chen Chung-hsing (陳中興) has previously said.
Dogs remaining on the streets would be captured and moved to shelters, he said.
As designated control areas in Taichung are limited, shelters in the city should have enough room, while additional facilities would be set up at existing shelters in Miaoli and Nantou counties to accommodate the relocated strays with enough outdoor activity space, Cheng said.
The control areas are Taichung’s Taiping (太平), Sinshe (新社) and Dongshi (東勢) districts; Nantou County’s Jhongliao (中寮), Mingjian (名間) and Jiji (集集) townships; and Miaoli County’s Jhuolan (卓蘭), Houlong (後龍) and Tongsiao (通霄) townships.
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