The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency’s Hualien branch has delivered a conservation plan to the Malibasi Village Office in Hualien County to create an ecological and cultural zone at the nation’s second-largest highland lake.
The agency is seeking confirmation that the plan complies with the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法).
The Executive Yuan’s policy to encourage people to engage with nature has successfully brought tourists to the area, but the agency said that such activity has also heavily affected the environment and local culture, which is the impetus for the project.
Photo courtesy of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency’s Hualien branch via CNA
The project, which began in 2019, is a collaboration between the agency and the village’s Bunun and Truku peoples to establish the Ning-av Kavilan Wildlife Conservation Area.
Ning-av Kavilan, otherwise known as Multihued Lake (七彩湖), Battle Lake (戰湖) or the Lake of the Hunt (狩獵的湖), is the nation’s second-largest and second-deepest highland lake. It is a critical wildlife habitat with great historical and cultural significance for the Bunun people.
The agency said that the project would designate a core conservation area and gradually spread outward based on ecological sensitivity and the goal of preserving the indigenous cultural landscape.
The project has also worked with the agency’s Nantou branch’s Bunun Acang Traditional Cultural Landscape and Wildlife Conservation Area project to help conserve highland lakes’ ecology and biological diversity, as well as indigenous culture.
The project hopes to reduce the negative impacts of tourist activities on nature and local culture in the Danda region, located around Nantou County’s Sinyi Township (信義).
Hualien branch Director-General Huang Chun-tse (黃群策) on Thursday said that the Ning-av Kavilan conservation area is in line with the UN’s 2007 non-binding resolution the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
It is the first wildlife conservation area to involve indigenous people from planning to implementation, demonstrating respect for their culture and way of life, he said.
The agency said it hopes the area would become a role model for future endeavors that seek to combine the goals of conserving nature and culture.
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