In a bid to streamline the tree protection efforts of central and local authorities, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Wen-yen (邱文彥) on Tuesday organized a forum aimed at gathering the opinions of environmental protection groups and local governments in preparation for a proposed amendment to the Forestry Act (森林法) that, if passed, would make the act the legal standard of local policy formulation.
National Taiwan University professor Kuo Cheng-meng (郭城孟) urged the legislature to pass the amendment, saying that the trees growing on low-altitude mountains surrounding cities are a precious natural resource.
Citing Taipei as an example, he said the city was special, as it is surrounded by mountains, which sets it apart from other major international cities. However, the trees growing on the mountains are not protected by the act, which only includes provisions for the protection of forests designated and overseen by the Forestry Bureau.
Tainan Community University researcher Wu Jen-pang (吳仁邦) said there is ambiguous distribution of responsibilities among agencies under the purview of the Greater Tainan Government.
For example, he said that trees planted at the city’s Confucius Temple are managed by the Cultural Affairs Bureau, while those planted at schools and in parks are maintained by the Bureau of Education and the Public Works Bureau respectively.
He added that improvement of the mechanism of ecological compensation must be included in the amendment, so that the regulations requiring developers to relocate trees affected by construction projects can be upheld.
Tree Party Chairman Pan Han-chiang (潘翰疆) said that trees in publis areas should only be relocated when they threaten people’s safety, as developers often use crude methods during relocation, endangering the survival of the trees.
He said the nation should establish an examination and ranking system to select qualified horticulturalists and issue licenses to improve the process of relocating trees.
Taiwan Tree Protection Alliance founder Angela Chang (張美惠) urged that a census system for trees be established, so that all public trees can be listed and tracked.
On the tree protection bylaws promulgated by local governments, she said that they should not solely protect trees that meet certain qualifications, such as those which reach a certain height or have trunks of at least a certain width, as the characteristics of trees vary from one species to another.
She also suggested that penalties be raised for unscrupulous companies that uproot trees illegally.
Chiu said he would forward the suggestions made during the forum to members of the legislature’s Economics Committee, who are responsible for reviewing the proposed amendment.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift