The Council of Agriculture will review two applications to house a pair of pandas that China has offered Taiwan, an official at the Forestry Bureau said yesterday.
Fang Guo-yun (方國運), chief of the Forestry Bureau’s department of nature conservation, said a panel would be established on Thursday to review the applications by the Taipei Zoo and the Leofoo Safari Zoo in Hsinchu County.
The Leofoo Safari Zoo has recently signed an agreement with the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding to exchange information, experiences and ideas on conservation, the zoo said.
Taichung City has also shown interest in housing the pandas, but has not applied, Fang said.
“The key points of the review will include the training of the animals’ keepers and veterinarians, as well as the facilities ... where the pandas will be kept,” he said.
The pandas were offered after a visit by then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) to China in 2005.
The offer was rejected by the council under the former Democratic Progressive Party government, which said Taiwan did not have facilities for the animals.
After President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected in March, he said he would be pleased to see the pandas come to Taiwan.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
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IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
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