Environmentalists yesterday called on Taitung county commissioner candidates to sign a petition against a proposal for a photovoltaic power station to be built on the Jhihben Wetlands (知本溼地).
Initiated by the Society of Wilderness’ Taitung branch and the Wild Bird Society of Taitung, the petition aims to prevent the county government from building what might be the nation’s largest solar power station on a 161-hectare plot of land that overlaps the wetlands in the city’s Jhihben Borough (知本).
Covering nearly 20 hectares, the Jhihben Wetlands have up to 185 bird species and is designated by BirdLife International as one of the nation’s important bird and biodiversity areas under its code IBA-TW040, the groups wrote in the petition.
Photo: Chang Tsun-wei, Taipei Times
However, Jhihben is not among the nation’s protected wetlands, the Ministry of the Interior’s Web site showed.
The wetlands are owned by the Puyuma people of the Katatipul community, so the county government has contravened Article 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法) by not obtaining their consent before leasing the land, they wrote in the petition.
The land should be designated as an ecological conservation zone, they said, adding that the county government should propose a new development plan after conducting surveys on ecological conditions and reaching a consensus with local communities.
After collecting 3,532 signatures for the petition as of yesterday, they have sent it to those contesting the county commissioner election, independent candidate and former county commissioner Kuang Li-chen (鄺麗貞), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate and Taitung councilor Rao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴), Democratic Progressive Party candidate and lawmaker Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪), and independent candidates Huang Yu-ping (黃裕斌) and Peng Chuan-kuo (彭權國), they said.
Kuang, Liu and Huang have agreed to respond to the petition, which they would do on Tuesday next week so voters in the nine-in-one elections on Saturday next week could reference their positions, the groups said.
Liu this month promised he would suspend the development project if he is elected and criticized the county government for failing to respect local Aborigines.
To become self-sufficient in energy generation by 2050, the county needs more rational and open discussion on energy projects, Rao said, calling on Liu to propose a feasible renewable development plan to achieve the policy of making Taiwan nuclear-free by 2025.
Additional reporting by CNA
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS