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.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS