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New park a triumph for Aboriginals

A new national park, to be named Makao in the Aboriginal Atayal tribal language, will be inaugurated on May 20, a date which also marks the second anniversary of President Chen Shui-bian's inauguration, sources said yesterday.

It will be the first national park to be established since the DPP government took office and the first of its kind to be managed jointly by the government and indigenous people.

The Makao National Park will cover 53,000 hectares of land traversing the mountainous regions of the northern Taiwan counties of Taipei, Ilan, Taoyuan and Hsinchu.

The park, with Mount Chilan in Ilan County as its landmark peak, will boast Asia's only virgin cypress forest and a rare natural ecology dating from ancient times.

The nature reserve surrounding Yuanyang Lake in Mount Chilan is graced with dense stands of old cypress trees, most of which are aged over 2,000 years.

The land that will make up Makao National Park is mainly inhabited by Atayal people. Makao refers to a special species of plant known as Litsea cubeda. It is also called aromatic litsea, whose dried berries can be made into a hot-tasting spice for meat dishes. Makao is a favorite spice among the Atayal people.

Makao also refers to a specific branch of the Atayal tribe. Many members of this branch sacrificed their lives to protect their Chilan homeland from Japanese invasion during Japanese colonial rule. In remembrance of their ancestors' bravery and devotion, the Atayal people have named the Chilan mountainous region "Mount Makao."

The Cabinet reportedly has agreed to use its second reserve fund to finance the establishment of the new national park, the island's seventh national park.

The Construction and Planning Administration under the Ministry of the Interior is scheduled to finalize a field survey by the end of April and complete all other formalities in time for the inauguration of the new national park May 20.

Through the concerted efforts of a number of local environmental groups over the past year and with the DPP government's commitment to giving aboriginal citizens a say in the new park's management, obstacles to the establishment of the Makao National Park have finally been cleared.
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