After 12 years of restoration efforts by National Tsing Hua University professor Tseng Ching-hsien (曾晴賢), Hepu mitten crabs (Eriocheir hepuensis) — which at one point faced extinction due to industrial pollution — are gradually returning to their former habitat in Toucian Creek (頭前溪) in Hsinchu County.
Tseng recounted how 12 years ago, tens of thousands of crabs disappeared overnight, just after the first rainfall in May. The peculiar incident prompted him to launch a probe, which he said revealed that a number of unscrupulous factories had been discharging toxic wastewater into the creek downstream, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.
After the crabs were gone, Tseng said he started reporting every case of suspected discharges of toxic waste to authorities.
Photo courtesy of National Tsing Hua University
Whenever he saw dead fish, he sampled the water in the area and sent it to the local environmental protection agency for analysis, he said.
His long-term monitoring of illegally discharged wastewater served as a warning to businesses that dared to defy the law and, in September this year, small groups of mitten crabs began appearing along the creek’s basin again, he said.
Despite the recent revival, Tseng said the current number of mitten crabs is still much smaller compared with 12 years ago, estimating it at only about 10 percent of the original population.
It used to take the crabs more than one month to gather at the estuaries to move upstream before migrating to other places, but now the process only takes a matter of days, Tseng said.
“This shows how great an impact the expediency of humans has had on the ecology,” he said.
Tseng added that wild geese used to travel south to the area to spend the winter there when he started teaching at the university 23 years ago, but industrial effluent and poorly designed projects along the waterways have detracted from the area’s biodiversity.
Describing Toucian Creek as Hsinchu’s “mother river,” he envisaged a day when there is no longer a need for environmental protection groups.
“That is when my fellow environmentalists and I can truly celebrate victory,” he said.
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