There has been a marked decline in the number of waterfowl that winter in Taiwan, due to a loss of habitat in China, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said on Thursday.
Seven species have seen their numbers reduced drastically — the Eurasian teal, Pacific golden plover, greater sand plover, ruddy turnstone, long-toed stint, sanderling and the common snipe — while six have declined to a lesser extent — the gray heron, gray plover, little ringed plover, common greenshank, wood sandpiper and dunlin, the council said.
The decline in the numbers of migratory birds was discovered after studying statistics collected from the New Year Bird Count, which took place from Dec. 16 last year to Jan. 7. The annual event recorded 303,426 birds of 334 species, with 1,296 people participating.
Since 2014, there have been changes in flocks of 27 bird species and some of them — including the Pacific golden plover, gray plover, dunlin, long-toed stint, wood sandpiper, ruddy turnstone and common greenshank — have clearly declined in number, as observed in Australia and East Asia, it said.
The number of those birds seen in Taiwan is declining, because their numbers are decreasing in Australia and East Asia, it said.
Meanwhile, the little ringed plover, sanderling and greater sand plover are found to be increasing in Australia and other parts of East Asia, but declining in Taiwan, suggesting they are under more stress in the nation, the council said.
However, it identified the primary reason for the drop in waterfowl numbers as the loss of wetland habitat in coastal areas of the Yellow and Bohai seas between the Korean Peninsula and Dongtan, near Shanghai.
Embankments and other structures on the Chinese coast have been rapidly expanding and now reach 11,560km in length, accounting for 58 to 61 percent of the coastline, the council said, adding that they have destroyed wetland habitats.
The structures exceed the Great Wall of China in length and have been dubbed “the new Great Wall.”
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
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