Efforts to boost the population of Taiwan’s once critically endangered Formosan landlocked salmon have been a huge success, with numbers reaching a record in the past few years, a national park official said on Thursday.
The population of the indigenous salmon went from about 200 in 1995 to more than 15,000 in 2022, leading to a significant reduction in the extinction risk, Shei-Pa National Park Headquarters official Liao Lin-yan (廖林彥) said.
The endemic subspecies, a “glacial relict” left behind in Taiwan after the most recent ice age, is found only in water streams at elevations above 1,500m.
Photo: Chang Hsuan-tse, Taipei Times
Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) on Thursday morning visited the Formosan landlocked salmon gene bank at Shei-Pa National Park.
Liao showed Lu around, and she fed some of the salmon.
Waterless transport of zygotes to higher altitudes has been used in the work to revive the salmon population, Liao said.
Lu thanked the people involved for their efforts, adding that she reported on the program when she was a journalist.
The national park is planning to build a center where people can learn more about the work to revive the species, Liao said.
The species is estimated to number 15,374 in Taiwan, with large populations in Cijiawan Creek (七家灣溪) in Taichung’s Heping District (和平) and Hehuan Creek (合歡溪) in Nantou County’s Renai Township (仁愛), as well as smaller populations in Luoyewei Creek (羅葉尾溪), which flows near the Yilan County-Taichung border; Arikatsu Creek (有勝溪), which is a tributary of Luoyewei Creek; Nanhu Creek (南湖溪) in Heping; and Bilu Creek (畢祿溪) in Renai, a park survey conducted in 2022 showed.
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