Animal rights activists, environmentalists and other groups condemned the Council of Agriculture yesterday for “making a decision behind closed doors” on importing pandas from China and urged it to hold public hearings on the matter.
“In the past 20 years, applications to import pandas from China were filed on at least five occasions,” the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), the Taiwan Academy of Ecology, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and other groups said in a joint statement.
The groups said the first three applications filed by the Taipei City Zoo between 1988 and 1991 were rejected after the Executive Yuan and the council consulted experts and international animal protection groups.
In 2005, when Taipei City Zoo filed its fourth application to import pandas, the Democratic Progressive Party government called three meetings with animal specialists and experts, as well as a public hearing to which more than a dozen animal rights and ecological organizations were invited, the groups said.
However, after the Leofoo Theme Park and the Taipei City Zoo filed applications to import pandas this year, the situation changed, the group said.
“We have been completely excluded from the decision-making process,” EAST director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said. “Requests that the council make the decision-making process transparent were never answered. The council has even kept the list of academics who will sit on the application review committee confidential.”
The review committee is scheduled to meet today.
While names of review committee members were traditionally released to the public before the meeting, “the council said it would keep the list confidential to avoid ‘unnecessary’ disruptions and minimize the pressure on the members,” Chen said.
“In fact, the council has said it would announce [today] whether the Taipei City Zoo or the Leofoo Park will be home to the pandas, which shows us that the government has already approved the importation,” she said.
While Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials have argued that pandas from China could serve as “angels of peace” in cross-strait relations, Chen panned the government for politicizing pandas and putting “politics above ecology.”
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
RSS