A Formosan black bear was found dead and buried two weeks ago near a remote industrial road in Nantou County. Injuries were apparent on its head and chest. Authorities knew it was roaming the area in Sinyi Township (信義) from data provided by a tracker before it went mute, although the device was not found with the remains.
The media were quick to pick up the story, made more sensational by the bear’s ill-fated backstory. The same bear had been trapped and released at least five times before, possibly more, based on scars ringing its legs. Last year, reporters began calling it the “Dongmao Mountain (東卯山) bear” after it was found ensnared in wildlife traps twice in the span of two months on the Taichung mountain. Just last month it was trapped, rehabilitated and released once again, only to meet its ultimate demise a few weeks later.
From interviews with local residents and police, a likely although unconfirmed scenario began to take shape. Some hunters in the area reportedly take their scooters out at night, using the headlights to illuminate eyes of their prey moving through the dark woods. This method has inevitably led to mistakes, with hunters accidentally shooting protected animals, other hunters or illegal loggers, sometimes fatally. One resident theorized that the bear was shot in this manner and its tracker destroyed to cover up evidence of the accidental killing.
Arrests were announced on Friday of men surnamed Tien (田) and Ma (馬). Their homemade shotguns, bullets, mobile phones and other items were seized, and they were each released on NT$30,000 bail. Some headlines on the arrests boldly proclaimed: “The murderers have been found,” or deemed the men “heartless.”
The death of the beleaguered bear is tragic, especially considering its past run-ins with humans. Still, details of this case must not be mistaken as representative of all hunting practices in Taiwan.
Ever since it was virtually banned in the 1989 Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), indigenous people have been fighting to regain the right to hunt — an essential element of traditional practice. Amendments in 2004 gave some concessions for cultural or ritualistic purposes, regulated by strict rules. The issue made it to the Constitutional Court, and then last year to the Council of Grand Justices, which ruled against provisions requiring at least five days’ notice and prior notice of how many animals of which type were to be hunted. It did not overturn rules that require hunters to use homemade guns, which advocates criticize as dangerous.
Decades of stigmatization have turned indigenous hunters into convenient scapegoats for wildlife population declines, despite significant evidence that subsistence hunting has little impact on animal populations — especially compared with other culprits like industry and habitat destruction. Yet when a story like this comes around, the focus again shifts to the “heartless” hunters.
At the same time, few would defend methods such as the one that might have led to the Dongmao bear’s demise. Community elders themselves would be the first to condemn them, as they are by no means representative of the larger hunting community that upholds methods more connected to traditional knowledge. The debate around steel-jaw traps also seems to have been subsumed into the hunting question, without acknowledging their widespread use for pest control by farmers.
There is no easy answer to this problem, or else it would have been found already. Hunting traditions change with the times, just as wildlife populations rise and fall, requiring a flexible approach that centers on indigenous voices. The best way forward is to maintain sustained dialogue with communities, but this can only be achieved by respecting the rights of everyone involved and refusing to frame the problem as between two diametrically opposed interests.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US