Conservationists attack TV show

A news feature that appeared in a Chinese-language newspaper on May 7, which claimed that a construction project in central Taiwan led to the massacre of thousands of egrets in March, yesterday turned out to be a promotional strategy for a TV show whose host wrote the story.

The China Times story said that thousands of egrets, including nestlings in an area of woodland, were burnt by workers.

Horrifying photographs of panic-stricken birds hovering over woods and dead egrets caught up in nets set up by construction workers to prevent the birds from returning, attracted a large crowd of members of the media and conservation groups to a press conference held by the reporter and the photographer in Taipei yesterday.

Chian Tsun-hsiung (江村雄), a Changhua County-based photographer, said that he knew about the workers' plans to clear the three-hectare area of woodland last year. He said that workers did temporarily halt their work last year after discovering the nesting egrets in the woods, but nevertheless went ahead with their project in March without taking action to save the birds first.

Chian told the media yesterday that he felt that all he could do was to take photographs and produce videotapes to show the tragedy to the public. He never contacted conservation groups or government agencies to report his discovery.

"I've taken photos of egrets for two decades but the images of them being slaughtered really made me feel sad this time," Chian said.

Chian admitted, however, that the number of burnt nestlings was only about 100 rather than the 10,000 claimed in the newspaper article.

In response to questions regarding his failure to notify government agencies or conversation groups and his failure to include ecological information regarding the egret, Francisco Hsu (徐宗懋), the China Times reporter who wrote the story, said that his intention was not to present comprehensive information but to portray aspects of Taiwan's deteriorating environment. Hsu said that the China Times piece was the first in a series of stories dealing with conservation issues that are being produced for his TV show.

Former legislator Chou Chuan (周荃), who attended the press conference on behalf of the board chairman of Taiwan News Network (TNN, 真相新聞網), said that the egrets' plight was discovered by the team producing the show hosted by Hsu. Chou claimed that it would be Taiwan's first television show that used photographs to bring important issues to the public. However, she admitted indirectly that the exaggerated figures in the newspaper article were responsible for the successful turnout at yesterday's press conference.

"If the media knew earlier that the conference was about promoting a TV show on TNN, many cable TV networks like ETTV [東森電視] and TVBS, which are competitors of TNN, would not have been here," Chou said.

Still, Chou said, the fact that egrets' natural habitats are disappearing deserved attention and it was the media's responsibility to inform the general public of environmental issues.

Bird conservationists, however, said that they were disappointed that they had not received any news about the egrets' fate beforehand, thus making them unable to do anything to prevent the tragedy.

"It was a great shame. How could they say that they did not know where to report the case in advance? What about the local government?" said Simon Liao (廖世卿), director-general of the Wild Bird Federation of Taiwan (中華鳥會).