The Cabinet should reject a Council of Agriculture plan to relax restrictions on logging Taiwan's few remaining natural forests, environmentalists said yesterday.
Currently, forestry units under the Council of Agriculture are allowed to cut down natural forests as a part of research or reforestation efforts.
But the units in October proposed changes to the Taiwan Forest Reformation Act, which would allow them to also cut down natural forests in the event of an emergency and other unspecified reasons.
Environmentalists fear wider loopholes will mean greater logging of natural forests.
"We urge the Cabinet to reject the revision of the act proposed by the Council of Agriculture," Li Ken-cheng (李根政), director of the ecological education center of the National Teachers' Association, said yesterday.
"Too much natural forest has been destroyed in the name of research and reforestation," the director lamented.
An official at the council's forestry department said yesterday the proposed changes had not yet been sent to the Cabinet for review.
But the changes are needed to make it easier for forestry units to cut down trees without bureaucratic hinderance, the official said.
"Based on our experience in managing forests, the existing rules lack flexibility, which has caused inconveniences when emergency situations arise in mountainous areas," said a forestry official, who declined to be identified.
Forestry officials also said that the amount of area that would be affected by the new rules is small.
In addition, they said, the Taiwan Forest Reformation Act is helpful in aiding forest preservation efforts by promoting sustainable development.
Officials gave a number of examples including logging in protected forests around reservoir watersheds, ecological protection areas, nature preserves, national parks and other areas is strictly banned by the act.
But those provisions were set forth when the act was passed in 1991 and are not affected by the proposals now under consideration.
In a demonstration yesterday, conservationists said the DPP government would become a "forest killer" should it adopt the new rules.
Just 23 percent of the nation's remaining forests are natural, activists said. After decades of logging under the former Japanese colonial and KMT governments, little of the original old-growth forest remains.
"We are not haggling over the percentage of destroyed forest," said Lin Yih-ren (
"We worry about the government's old-fashioned environmental values, which focus on consuming natural resources rather than preserving them," Lin told the Taipei Times.
Aboriginal groups yesterday said the government's current forestry policies lack harmony with the lives of indigenous people.
"We Aboriginal people have to fight back for natural resource management rights in a bid to expand our survival space," said Atung Yupas (
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