Researchers recently found a sizable group of endangered Taiwanese sassafras trees in central Taiwan, with the Forestry Bureau saying it would preserve their genes and try cultivating them.
Bureau inspectors found the group of trees during a field survey in the Dandashan (丹大山) area in Nantou County’s Sinyi Township (信義), the bureau’s Nantou office said on Tuesday.
Tseng Yen-hsieh (曾彥學), an assistant professor at the Department of Forestry at National Chung Hsing University, who was commissioned to verify the finding, said there were more than 20 trees in the group, measuring 20cm to 30cm in diameter.
It was the second biggest group of the endemic species, listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered, ever to be found in Taiwan and the first to be discovered in the central part of the country.
The only bigger population group of the species has been found in Sheipa National Park, which straddles Miaoli and Hualien counties, said Liu Fu-sheng (劉福成), the director of the bureau’s Nantou office.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
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A 79-year-old woman died today after being struck by a train at a level crossing in Taoyuan, police said. The woman, identified by her surname Wang (王), crossed the tracks even though the barriers were down in Jhongli District’s (中壢) Neili (內壢) area, the Taoyuan Branch of the Railway Police Bureau said. Surveillance footage showed that the railway barriers were lowered when Wang entered the crossing, but why she ventured onto the track remains under investigation, the police said. Police said they received a report of an incident at 6:41am involving local train No. 2133 that was heading from Keelung to Chiayi City. Investigators