The death toll among black-faced spoonbills in a reserve in Tainan County had risen to 43 as of yesterday evening, while 14 more of the endangered birds were still sick, according to local officials.
The cause of the deaths of the rare birds remains unclear, the officials said, adding that it will take three to five days to determine whether the birds had succumbed to botulism or some other causes.
By and large, the officials went on, the incident has been brought under control, as no additional sick birds had been discovered since Tuesday.
The Tainan County Government has set up an emergency care center near the Chiku sanctuary at the mouth of the Tsengwen creek to rescue any more of the ill spoonbills, while the Council of Agriculture (COA) has sent veterinarians and animal disease experts to assist in treating the sick birds.
Environmentalists have also been helping out with rescue efforts.
County officials said five more seriously ill spoonbills had been sent to the COA's Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute in Nantou County for special care, while the dead birds had been sent to the Tainan County Animal Disease Control Center for autopsy and preservation.
Autopsies performed on nine of the birds show that they did not die from exposure to the cold or other natural causes, while six laboratory mice died within hours of being injected with a solution made from samples taken from the stomachs of the dead birds.
Animal disease control officials said the results suggest that the birds might have contracted botulism after eating dead fish or shrimp.
They said dead fish had been found in two hatcheries where the black-faced spoonbills had been feeding.
However, they added that more time is needed to determine whether botulism was the cause of death.
Some media reports had said that clostridium could be responsible for the deaths. Bacteria of the genus clostridium kill more wild birds each year than any other germ, animal health officials said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater