Expat and International Primate Protection League representative John Spowart got more then he bargained for last weekend when his amiable afternoon saunter through the woods close to his home at the foot of Taipei's popular forest park, Four Beasts Mountain (四獸山), turned into confrontation with illegal bamboo farmers.
Having lived in the Sungshan District (松山區) adjacent to the park for almost five years, Spowart has witnessed a steady rise in the number of illegal bamboo plots in the area. Groves the size of basketball courts have replaced large tracts of land that were once rich in flora. It was only last weekend, however, that Spowart had come face to face with a couple of the perpetrators.
PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES
The British national's polite inquiries in regards the legality of felling trees and clearing large tracts of land in the area he knew to be part of the Taipei City Government-administered park were initially met by a flurry of insults followed by something along the line of, "What's it got to do with you?"
"They were annoyed at my presence and figured it was none of my business. But as I pointed out to them, I was on a public footpath and it was in fact them who had no business being there felling trees and planting bamboo," Spowart said. "It all got a bit heated. I kept asking them about their rights to plant bamboo here. Of course, they didn't have answers to this. I went to call the park authorities and they buggered off."
Along with betel nut palms, bamboo can be one of the most destructive of the harvested plants found in Taiwan. The root system releases toxins into the surrounding earth that kills anything attempting to grow and its canopy denies other flora the sunlight it needs to continue to thrive. One 2m bamboo plant can effectively destroy an area of 1.5m2 of land.
"People plant it because they know it doesn't need tending and grows quickly. It's a relatively easy cash crop to grow and one that is popular with people who have access to land and are looking to make extra money," said Hu Jer-ming (胡哲明), assistant professor at the National Taiwan University Department of Botany. "The effects of bamboo on the natural environment aren't as widely publicized as that of betel nut palms, but it is just as devastating."
"It's a big problem in the Taipei area. They [illegal farmers] figure that because the land is empty and not used by anybody that they can use it for their own needs," said Tsao Fu-chung (曹福忠) of the Taipei City Government's Department of Economic Development (台北市政府建設局). "We get dozens of calls every years from people like Spowart who discover illegal farms on land in Taipei. Of course, many more people ignore it, which is a pity as this only leads to more land being enveloped by the `farmers.'"
The problem of illegal bamboo groves within Taipei City's environs is not limited to Four Beasts Mountain. The problem is endemic on Yangmingshan (陽明山), especially in the Peitou area as well as in the areas around Neishungxi (內雙溪). Because of the large areas of land involved it is impossible for people such as Tsao to adequately monitor the area without public support.
As part of its ongoing environmental awareness programs, Taipei City Government's Department of Economic Development encourages people who discover illegal farms on government and public land to inform them. But though the city government sends a team of land specialists to every site where illegal farming is reported and erects signs informing would-be farmers of the illegality of using the land to cultivate crops, few of the unlawful farmers are prosecuted. Catching the unscrupulous cultivators in the act rarely, if ever happens according to the Council of Agriculture (行政院農業委員會).
"On a national scale the problem of illegal farming in Taipei is pretty small, yet it's still damaging," said a spokesperson for the Council of Agriculture. "A lot of the illegal farming takes place at night. These guys know that no one will bother them then. Even if people do stumble across them very few bother tell the authorities."
At present those caught cultivating crops illegally face a maximum fine of NT$600,000, or from between six months and five years imprisonment. While the city government program is proving moderately successful, many feel the number of calls needs to increase drastically if the problem is to be dealt with on a scale that will make a difference and deter would-be illegal bamboo farmers. Until then, however, it looks as if environmentalists such as Spowart are facing an uphill battle.
"The hills around Taipei are beautiful and have a pretty high density of species, which is good news for all of us. But if profit- motivated individuals are allowed to destroy it the impact will be felt right across the board," Spowart said. "I hope the city government can do something to enforce its own laws. It needs regular monitoring and a lot more citizen involvement."
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
One of the challenges with the sheer availability of food in today’s world is that lots of us end up spending many of our waking hours eating. Whether it’s full meals, snacks or desserts, scientists have found that it’s not uncommon for us to be mindlessly grazing at some point during all of our 16 or so waking hours. The problem? As soon as this food hits the bloodstream in the form of glucose, it initiates the release of the hormone insulin. This in turn activates a switch present in every one of our cells, which is responsible for driving cell
RSS