A national bird survey is to be conducted around the New Year’s Day holiday to both celebrate the new year and raise public awareness about wildlife protection, the Chinese Wild Bird Federation (CWBF) said.
The survey would be the first of its kind in Taiwan since 1983 and involves universities, civic groups and over 20 local bird associations setting up more than 100 observation sites, which are expected to range across 8.6 percent of Taiwan proper, CWBF campaigner Allen Lyu (呂翊維) said.
Lyu said the census would take place between Dec. 28 and Jan. 12 and will involve volunteers recording the bird species they spot during periods of at least six consecutive hours within the sites, which each have a radius of three kilometers.
A database on bird populations will be built based on the findings, allowing follow-up investigations to be made in years to come, Lyu said.
Through periodic documentation, conservationists can better understand birds’ living environments and draw up better protection plans, he said.
It is also hoped that the idea of citizen science, which relies on public participation in scientific research, can be implemented as a fun family activity, Lyu said.
“We need the public to support this project, because there are only a limited number of researchers,” he said.
According to the CWBF, the concept for the survey came from the Christmas Bird Count in North America, in which nature lovers are asked to identify as many bird species as they can from mid-December to early January.
Taiwan used to hold new year bird counts between 1974 and 1983, but the activity was suspended, the federation said.
Anyone interested can find out more at nybc.bird.org.tw.
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
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
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,