Elementary school students wearing green hats made of recycled paper in the shape of a Robin Hood cap handed out seeds of Taiwanese indigenous plants to passengers at three Taiwan High Speed Rail (HSR) stations over the weekend, as part of a project to encourage environmental protection and ecology education.
The two-day project, called “Give out seeds at High Speed Rail, start a green life,” was initiated by the Jane Goodall Institute Taiwan, in cooperation with Taiwan High Speed Rail.
The Jane Goodall Institute is a non-profit organization that contributes to the preservation of great apes and their habitats, by combining conservation with education and the promotion of sustainable livelihoods in local communities.
The children yesterday handed out Taiwanese golden-rain tree seeds at Taichung HSR station, Formosan ash seeds at Hsinchu HSR station and whole-leaf hawthorn seeds at Taoyuan HSR -station. All three tree species are native to Taiwan.
At the Taichung station, a children’s samba and reggae drum troupe from a community in Yunlin County performed during the event.
The institute said that by giving out a thousand seed packages at the stations, they wished to convey the importance of helping Taiwan’s natural environment by planting indigenous plants.
“The native plants whose seeds were handed out at the stations are producers at the base of the food chain in Taiwan’s ecology, but when the number of alien species invading the natural habitat increases, native animals [consumers] have a hard time finding food, leading to a reduced number of indigenous animals, or even extinction [of species],” the institute said.
Children from six elementary schools around the country participated in the weekend event.
The institute said it would continue with the project and hoped to hand out about 30,000 seeds to HSR passengers.
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