An endangered bird has been rescued from a fish restaurant, the New Taipei City Animal Protection and Health Inspection Office said.
Police and animal protection personnel on Friday last week conducted a search of the restaurant, which is in the mountainous areas of Tucheng District (土城), after receiving a tip that it was illegally keeping a Taiwan hwamei (畫眉) (Leucodioptron taewanum), the office said, adding that a bird kept in a cage on the cashier’s counter was confiscated during the search.
The restaurant had broken the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) by publicly displaying an endangered species without authorization, the office said, adding that investigations into the illegal trapping and trafficking of the bird are under way.
Photo courtesy of New Taipei City Government Animal Protection And Health Inspection Office
According to police, the restaurant’s owner, surnamed Chiang (江), said he did not know the bird was a member of an endangered species and that he had received it as a gift from a friend of his father-in-law.
Chiang reportedly told police that the bird was given to him without a protected species registration card and that he had decided to display it in the restaurant after checking with an Internet forum in an attempt to determine if it was a member of an endangered species.
The Taiwan hwamei is endemic to Taiwan and its natural habitat is secondary forests in mountainous regions under 1,200m. They are distinguished from the Chinese hwamei by their brownish color and lack of white “eyebrow” stripes, office director Chen Yuan-chuan (陳淵泉) said.
The Taiwan hwamei population is declining, despite conservation efforts, due to habitat loss and crossbreeding with Chinese hwamei that were introduced into Taiwan in large numbers during the 1980s, he said.
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