Bird watchers yesterday warned the indigenous Taiwan Hwamei (Leucodioptron taewanum) may face extinction if the threat of cross-breeding with the Chinese variety is not controlled soon.
“Because of the reckless abandonment of pet Chinese Hwamei’s into the wild, the wild Taiwan Hwamei population is currently being impacted greatly,” Lin Hui-shan (林惠珊) of the Chinese Wild Bird Federation told the Taipei Times yesterday.
The Hwamei is mostly brown with a scattering of black feathers on its head, back and breast, and measures about 24cm long.
PHOTO: CNA
The Taiwan Hwamei was once thought to be a sub-species of the Chinese Hwamei, but in 2006 the Council of Agriculture’s (COA) Endemic Species Research Institute, via a gene analysis, found that the Taiwanese birds are endemic to the island as they are at least 3.5 percent genetically different from their Chinese counterparts, meaning that the two have evolved independently for about 1.5 million years.
The Chinese Hwamei derives its name from its most distinctive character — a white ring around its eyes. Hwamei means “drawn eyebrows (畫眉)” in Mandarin.
Lin added that Chinese Hwamei have traditionally been imported as pets because of their pleasant vocalizations. Though the COA banned the sale of Hwameis in 2002, crossbreeds of the Taiwanese and Chinese birds are being increasingly spotted in the wild, she said.
“The Taiwan Hwamei is unique to Taiwan. If the crossbreeding continues, not only will we one day cease to see Taiwan Hwamei’s, the world may lose this species from its ecosystem,” she said.
Lin called on people who own imported birds as pets to refrain from releasing them into the wild and take measures to prevent them from escaping.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the