Mitten crabs, who have been disappearing due to overfishing and changes to their habitat, have been found laying eggs in rivers in eastern Taiwan, showing that local environmental conditions have improved, the Forestry Bureau’s Hualien Forest District Office said on Saturday.
The endemic Eriocheir formosa species used to live in rivers on the east coast from Yilan County’s Toucheng Township (頭城) to Pingtung County’s Manjhou Township (滿洲), the office said.
The crabs were often seen in the Jialang River (加塱溪) in Hualien’s Fongbin Township (豐濱), but have become scarce over the past few years, with only experienced crabbers able to find them, said Wang Ming-yuan (王明源), a local Amis community elder.
Photo courtesy of the Forestry Bureau’s Hualien Forest District Office
Environmental changes might explain the reduction in their number, Wang said.
The office last year commissioned a survey of ecological changes along the Jialang River, which reported the mitten crabs’ return, office director Yang Jui-fen (楊瑞芬) said.
Adult mitten crabs can lay 80,000 to 170,000 eggs and move from rivers to the ocean to release them, Yang said.
After hatching, the larvae move back to the rivers, where the water is cleaner, she said.
However, construction work at the mouth of the Jialang has made it difficult for larvae to return to upstream areas, while overfishing has also contributed to the decline, she added.
The discovery of mitten crabs with eggs proves the importance of restoring river ecosystems, while construction across rivers should be done with an awareness of animal habitats, Yang said.
Mitten crabs like to stay in rivers with diverse conditions, such as forests, moss and ferns, and sufficient sunlight, which provide an ecosystem that supplies sufficient food, the office said.
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