An animal rescue group on Thursday accused National Beigang Senior High School of setting a bad example for its students by calling for all stray dogs to be rounded up indiscriminately, regardless of their behavior.
According to its Facebook post, the Animal Rescue Team Taiwan received complaints from several of the school’s faculty members and students claiming that the dean, Tsai Mang-feng (蔡孟峰), had announced during a flag-raising ceremony on Jan. 7 that people should not feed stray dogs and that the school had asked the Yunlin County Government’s animal disease control center to help it round up stray dogs on school grounds.
The post also said that the school was indiscriminate in rounding up the animals and had even removed and was preparing to euthanize a dog nicknamed “Coffee” (咖啡), that many in the school cared about.
The school, in particular the dean’s office, was bombarded with messages from dog lovers and netizens calling for the school to overturn its decision, but Tsai said that the announcement had been made following numerous reports of students and faculty members being chased by stray dogs over the past two weeks.
Tsai said the school acted on the recommendation of its faculty and also in response to recent reports of a young boy who was mauled by stray dogs and had to receive about 100 stitches.
Tsai added that the decision had been made because stray dogs had also attacked multiple staff members and students.
Tsai said that ideally, stray dogs on the school’s premises would have been rounded up before Jan. 9, but that currently only one had been caught and put up for adoption.
The school does not intend to round up all stray dogs, only those that are aggressive and attack or chase people, Tsai said, adding that Coffee was still on the school grounds.
As for the dog that has been caught, if the school decides that the dog is not aggressive, it will allow its faculty staff to adopt it to spare it from the fate of being put down, Tsai said.
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
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