The Kenting National Park Administration yesterday rejected reports that herds of Formosan sika deer had been slaughtered, but added that current laws are insufficient to protect the animals from poaching or mistreatment.
Reports yesterday claimed that more than 300 Formosan sika deer under the care of park administrators had been killed by humans and stray dogs, with their remains scattered across Longzaipu Meadow (籠仔埔) and Banana Bay (香蕉灣) in the park.
Park Deputy Director Lee Teng-chih (李登志) said the agency and local police inspected the sites immediately after hearing the reports, but found just nine dead deer on the meadow, which Lee attributed to an attack by stray dogs.
Photo: CNA
This is not the first time deer in the park have been attacked by strays, he said.
Referring to what were said to be the bones of deer packed into bags and discarded in the bay, Lee said that preliminary documentation by National Pingtung University of Science and Technology professor Pei Chia-chi (裴家驥) of some skulls found among the remains indicated that the bones belonged to pigs.
He added that pig farmers have disposed of pig bones in the bay for a long time.
Suspected illegal hunters found guilty of poaching in the national park would be fined NT$3,000 under the National Park Act (國家公園法), Lee said, adding that he thinks the fine is “very low.”
Lee said that the law has remained largely the same since it was introduced in the 1970s and that the penalties it stipulates are outdated.
He said that the administration wants to register the deer on the Forestry Bureau’s list of protected wildlife, which would give them better protection under the law, but the animals must pass a Council of Agriculture analysis of their DNA.
The species went extinct in the wild in the 1970s and was restored in about 1984, but some have suspected that the current herds are products of mixed breeding, which has prevented them from being recognized by the council, Lee said.
He added that his agency is gathering information to prove that the deer are pure-blooded.
He said that there are about 2,000 Formosan sika deer on the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) and in the Jioupeng area (九棚) in Pingtung, but most are in captivity in a protected zone managed by the administration.
A prior placement project was unsuccessful, with all 233 deer released into the wild having died, Lee said.
Forestry Bureau Section Chief Kuan Li-hao (管立豪) said the failure of the placement project is the major reason preventing the deer from being recognized.
He said that the deer in the park, restored from Formosan sika deer at zoos, drew suspicion over their origins, with some saying that they could be the offspring of sika deer imported from abroad.
He said that he would love to see the deer put on the list, but urged the administration to cooperate with the bureau in providing a placement project assessment report and DNA documentation.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not