The Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday rejected the Taipei City Zoo's application to import two giant pandas from China.
China offered to donate the pandas to Taiwan in 2005, shortly after a visit to China by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (
The zoo filed an application to the Council of Agriculture shortly after Beijing first announced that it wanted to send the pandas to Taiwan, but the council rejected the application the following year, saying that the zoo did not offer adequate facilities to care for the endangered species.
PHOTO: CNA
The zoo appealed to the Cabinet, but was again turned down, after which it filed a second appeal with the Taipei High Administrative Court last year.
The court ruled that the zoo's preparations were incomplete and rejected its appeal.
The zoo had argued that the Council of Agriculture's rejection had been unfair because the zoo began training zookeepers and constructing enhanced facilities in 2005.
Zoo officials said the council should have evaluated the application in terms of whether the zoo was making the necessary preparations rather than whether the preparations were complete.
The judges said in their verdict that the Council of Agriculture's evaluation and decisions were correct.
"We respect the verdict, but we will not give up," zoo director Chen Pao-chung (
"We plan to refile the application," he said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
Unlike when the zoo filed its first application, Hau said it was now fully prepared to care for the pandas.
Inspecting the three-story panda exhibition hall at the zoo yesterday, Hau said that the facility would be completed in June, and that zookeepers were undergoing training in the meantime.
The hall includes a panda nursery on the first floor, two indoor rooms and one outdoor activity room.
"Taipei City is ambitious about getting the pandas, and we hope the two pandas will have children at the zoo," he said.
The zoo has spent NT$300 million (US$9.9 million)on building the hall and has sent 17 zookeepers to the panda-breeding base in Sichuan, China, the San Diego Zoo in the US and Ueno Zoo in Tokyo to learn how to raise and breed giant pandas.
The zoo has planted 6 hectares of bamboo to feed the animals.
Besides Taipei, Hsinchu County, Taichung City and Hualien County are vying to provide a new home for pandas.
Giant pandas are among the rarest animals in the world. There are about 1,600 giant pandas in the world, most of which live in the wild in China's Sichuan Province.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY DPA
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS