The government is taking lessons from the recent mass die-off of endangered black-faced spoonbills in southern Taiwan and studying the feasibility of forming a permanent team of specialists to deal with similar wildlife conservation issues in the future, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
Council Vice Chairman Tai Cheng-yao (戴振耀) made the remarks during an international symposium on black-faced spoonbills held in Tainan County.
Tai noted that despite strenuous efforts to save them, 73 black-faced spoonbills have died from botulism poisoning since the first reported cases Dec. 9 in the Chiku Wetland.
He said that designating a black-faced spoonbill conservation area in Tainan County is not enough; the nation has to learn from the experiences of other countries to reduce the incidence of mishaps among endangered birds.
Tainan County Magistrate Su Huan-chi (蘇煥智) expressed his appreciation at the symposium to those who had helped rehabilitate the birds that were saved and said that the symposium will serve as a reference for future rescue operations.
Experts from Japan, the US and Taiwan participated in the two-day meeting to discuss black-faced spoonbill conservation, identification of illness in the birds and subsequent contingency measures, and management and analysis of their habitat.
Meanwhile, with the weather becoming warmer, bird watchers in Tainan have reported that the number of endangered birds is decreasing.
They said that from past experience, this is about the time that spoonbills start to migrate north and that the number would normally decrease dramatically by the end of the month.
By the end of May, all the birds will likely have left.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS