Environmental protection groups on Tuesday called on the Fisheries Agency to direct more resources to coastal life protection instead of spending most of its budget on distant-water fishing management to curry favor with the European Commission on illegal fishing issues.
Three groups petitioned the Cabinet on the eve of yesterday’s World Animal Day, demanding that the government pay more attention to marine life protection.
“The nation is developing offshore wind farms, but we have not seen a comprehensive plan from the government for the protection of marine ecology,” Matsu Fish Conservation Union chairman Chen Bing-heng (陳秉亨) said.
The population of Taiwanese humpback dolphins is rapidly shrinking, with fewer than 70 living in the waters surrounding Taiwan, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association chairman Robin Winkler (文魯彬) said, adding that offshore wind farm development might lead to their extinction.
The dolphins are facing five threats: marine and air pollution; reduction of their habitats; noise; and fishing activities, he said.
Nearly half of the agency’s annual budget is directed to distant-water fishing management, as it is trying to have Taiwan removed from the EU’s “yellow card” warning list this year, Oceanus Honors Gaia Association chairman Lin Ai-lung (林愛龍) said.
After receiving the groups’ petition, Executive Yuan Department of Economics, Energy and Agriculture Director Liao Chi-tsung (廖繼宗) said the Bureau of Energy should require offshore wind farm developers to use construction methods that minimize noise.
The Forestry Bureau should disclose the habitats of the dolphins and the Fisheries Agency should update its statistics about fines for fishermen using drift nets, Liao told the groups.
The agency is paying equal attention to coastal and distant-water fishing management, but the latter is better-known, as it attracts the attention of the media, agency Deputy Director-General Huang Hung-yan (黃鴻燕) said.
The agency spends about NT$100 million (US$3.28 million) annually to stop fishermen from using drift nets and help them adopt other fishing methods, Fisheries Regulation Division section chief Shen Chen-chen (沈珍珍) said.
While drift nets are often used in waters with a rocky ocean bed, the agency leaves their regulation to local governments, she said, adding that New Taipei City and Keelung, as well as Pingtung, Taitung and Penghu counties have banned the use of drift nets within 3 nautical miles (5.6km) of the coast.
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,
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XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods