An animal rights group yesterday urged the government to investigate within three months the conditions of protected animals raised by private citizens and regulate the owners by executing a microchip implant policy after it received multiple reports that some protected animals were being tortured by the owners.
At a press conference yesterday, the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) disclosed a video clip showing a honey bear and a Formosan black bear imprisoned in a small cage. The honey bear was pacing back and forth and kept licking its fur, while the black bear was lying listlessly in its cage.
“When the video was shown to animal experts in the UK, they told us that the bears showed symptoms of animals living on the verge of insanity,” EAST director Chen Yu-ming (陳玉敏) said. “Eventually the honey bear died and the black bear’s paws were broken.”
“The bears needed trees to scratch their paws and backs, but they were forced to live in cages and live on swill,” she said.
“It is like they were better off dying than living,” she said.
Chen said that when asked the whereabouts of the dead honey bear, the owner told the EAST representative they had dumped the body on a mountainside and did not eat it.
Aside from the bears, Chen said they also found other protected animals living under inhumane conditions, including orangutans and tigers.
The group said the practice of keeping protected animals did not seem to have been changed by an amendment to the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) in 1994 that states that authorities must help the owners finish raising the protected animals within three years.
“The official statistics only show that the nation has about 1,507 animals from protected species raised by private citizens as of May 31 this year,” Chen said. “Since no data was available in 1994, there is no way of knowing if the number is increasing or decreasing.”
“The plight of the animals showed that the act was not adequately enforced,” EAST chairman Thomas Chan (詹順貴) said, adding that the Council of Agriculture and local governments should inspect the premises these protected animals are kept on and find out if any of the owners mistreat the animals. Protected animals should also be implanted with microchips and registered in the government’s database to prevent the owners from abusing these animals, Chan added.
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
FINAL COUNTDOWN: About 50,000 attended a pro-recall rally yesterday, while the KMT and the TPP plan to rally against the recall votes today Democracy activists, together with arts and education representatives, yesterday organized a motorcade, while thousands gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei in the evening in support of tomorrow’s recall votes. Recall votes for 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu City mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) are to be held tomorrow, while recall votes for seven other KMT lawmakers are scheduled for Aug. 23. The afternoon motorcade was led by the Spring Breeze Culture and Arts Foundation, the Tyzen Hsiao Foundation and the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, and was joined by delegates from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and the Taiwan Solidarity
An SOS message in a bottle has been found in Ireland that is believed to have come from the Taiwanese captain of fishing vessel Yong Yu Sing No. 18 (永裕興18號), who has been missing without a trace for over four years, along with nine Indonesian crew members. The vessel, registered to Suao (蘇澳), went missing near Hawaii on Dec. 30, 2020. The ship has since been recovered, but the 10 crew members have never been found. The captain, surnamed Lee (李), is believed to have signed the note with his name. A post appeared on Reddit on Tuesday after a man
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS