Aboriginal communities in Hualien County’s Fengbin Township (豐濱) are reviving their farmlands near the sea as part of the Forestry Bureau’s “Forest-Mountain-Borough-Sea” initiative, bureau officials told a news conference in Hualien yesterday.
The initiative was first proposed by Lee Kuang-chung (李光中), an associate professor at National Dong Hwa University’s College of Environmental Studies, who found the township’s Sinshe Village (新社) a perfect place for eco-agricultural experiments.
Lee’s proposal borrows from the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity and the “Global Workshop on the Satoyama Initiative” that was held by UNESCO in Paris in January 2010, which aims to promote the sustainability of biodiversity and human livelihoods.
Acting on advice from Lee, the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, the Forestry Bureau and the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau established a platform in October last year to promote the “Forest-Mountain-Borough-Sea” initiative.
The Kebalan and Amis Dipit communities are among the village residents, with about 300 people living in the terraces between the Coastal Range and the Pacific Ocean, Lee said.
The 600-hectare terrace area is an intact water catchment area, Lee said.
Growing produce on terraces is challenging because large machines cannot be used on the narrow strips of land, bureau Conservation Division Director Hsia Jung-sheng (夏榮生) said.
Lin Yu-fei (林玉妃), 45, returned to her Kebalan community to grow rice after working at Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital for more than 20 years.
“After my mother passed away five years ago, our family farmland fell into disuse. To maintain my mother’s spirit, our family decided to restore the farm,” she said.
The family did not originally plan on growing produce because their farm’s irrigation system was ruined years ago, but a friend who works at the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station said her land was beautiful and would be good for growing organic rice, she said.
Soil and Water Conservation Bureau officials helped her to repair the irrigation pipes, she said.
Now there are “eight fools” growing rice, yellow and black beans and buckwheat in the Kebalan community, Lin said.
With the help of officials, 80-year-old Wang Ming-yuan (王明源) of the Amis Dipit community has also started to grow organic rice.
His farm has grabbed visitors’ attention because of an unusual scarecrow that is made of bamboo and recycled iron and resembles a set of percussion instruments.
The scarecrow was made by Teng Tun-fang (鄧敦方), a young woman from Taipei who has fallen in love with the area and has been helping with community work.
Asked whether the Amis Dipit community has benefited from the “Forest-Mountain-Borough-Sea” initiative, Teng said there are upsides and downsides.
The initiative brings in more resources and visitors, she said, but serving visitors can be a burden to communities, especially during summer vacations. The government should not just promote short-term tourism, but should help Aboriginal communities cultivate sustainable industries, she said.
Asked if the initiative would help farmers become financially independent, Lee said that that young people have difficulty supporting their families by selling agricultural produce and many have to leave for cities to work.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS