Only days after beginning official operations, the high speed rail system has attracted the ire of yet another group of critics: bird lovers.
Birdwatchers in southern Taiwan said last week that bullet trains are killing "many" wild birds along the high speed rail routes. Although they could not provide numbers to support their claims, they pointed to bloodstains "commonly seen" on the bullet trains as evidence of an avian massacre.
Lin Shih-hsien (林世賢), a veterinarian at an emergency aid station for birds in Changhua County, said in a program on the Broadcasting Corporation of China that the high-speed railway located near Baguashan Tunnel (八卦山隧道) is surrounded by a vast natural habitat for wild birds.
As the high speed trains operate at 300kph, he said, they will inevitably hit relatively slow-flying wild birds.
Lin urged that the Council of Agriculture investigate whether birds' lives are in indeed endangered by the high-speed rail. He added that if this were the case, the council should file a lawsuit against Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) for violating the Wildlife Conservation Law (
Tsai Meng-lin (蔡孟霖), executive director of the Wild Birds Society in Changhua, said he was aware of the bloodstains, as well as traces of rail kill. But he said that further observations were needed to determine whether the high-speed rail threatens the existence of birds in the Baguashan area.
Tsai said the society would be "more than happy" to investigate the matter, should THSRC request its assistance.
The company said last year that railway accidents would not jeopardize the safety of the high speed rail. It also said that it believes wild birds would learn to avoid flying near the fast-moving trains.
Meanwhile, the company has allocated funds to help protect the habitats of the rare Pheasant-tailed Jacana Hydrophasianus chirurgus in Kuantien (官田), Tainan County, as compensation for allowing the high speed rail to pass through the area.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS