Most of the driftwood washed downstream in the Tachia and Taan rivers by torrential rains in early July was from trees naturally uprooted rather than those felled intentionally before Tropical Storm Mindulle, forestry officials said yesterday.
The Council of Agriculture's Forestry Bureau said that about 5,900 cubic meters of driftwood in the two rivers had been collected by the government for further sale. Pictures of the driftwood accumulations in the rivers were displayed at a press conference yesterday.
"The length and type of collected trunks vary. We estimate that more than 99 percent of the driftwood was washed down naturally," said Yen Jen-teh (顏仁德), who is the Forestry Bureau's director general.
Showing aerial photos taken before and after the July 2 flood, Yen said that heavy rains brought by Mindulle washed away vegetation and trees in many places, further expanding the total area of collapsed land in central Taiwan. After the 921 earthquake in 1999, the area of collapsed mountain land was about 1,700 hectares, but the July flooding expanded this area to 1,800 hectares.
The flooding washed a huge volume of wood from the mountains into rivers. High-altitude tree species including Taiwan Yellow Cypress (
The unit price for a cubic meter of high-quality Taiwan Yellow Cypress is about NT$100,000.
Yen said that forestry agencies had done their best to collect the driftwood along 142kms of the Tachia River and 96kms of the Taan River after the flood.
"Illegal cases involving trimming trees before the arrival of heavy rains were rare," Yen said.
Current laws entitle residents to collect driftwood one month after a natural disaster occurs. After Mindulle, community residents have been allowed to collect driftwood between Aug. 3 and Aug. 31.
However, residents complained that within the first month after the disaster, much valuable wood had already been marked by the government for collection and future sale.
Meanwhile, legislators criticized the Forestry Bureau earlier this month for not pursuing illegal loggers and timber merchants.
Yen said yesterday that the establishment of a 178-member team of forestry police in July 1 had led to investigations of 19 cases of forestry law violations.
According to Lee Chung-shing (
"In addition to logging, we also found that certain groups grow marijuana secretly in the deep mountains," Lee said.
Forestry officials said yesterday that collected driftwood would be sold to the public, and that a quotation of prices for diverse types of wood would be available on the bureau's web site early next month.
Local Chinese-language media estimated that the value of driftwood collected by the government this year could be NT$1 billion. However, forestry officials yesterday declined to specify a value.
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
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
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