The annual winter arrival of endangered black-faced spoonbills is expected to begin next month, but a monitoring program on their main habitat in southern Taiwan has not even been started.
A total of 73 of the rare birds died of botulism after eating contaminated fish on the Chiku sanctuary near the estuary of the Tsengwen River in Tainan County between late December 2002 and early January last year.
Such was the concern at the time that Japan and South Korea sent experts to help investigate the cause of the die-off, while the Council of Agriculture (COA) also called several meetings to study contingency measures.
The Livestock Disease Control Center of Tainan County noted yesterday that since June last year, the COA has conducted more than 430 tests on botulism in the birds' habitat and found seven sites that tested positive. The Tainan county government began clean-up work immediately, including turning over the soil and picking up dead fish.
But center officials said that there has been no monitoring of the habitat so far. The officials said that the test kits are not cheap and they have to rely on the COA for the monitoring program and related budgets.
The monitoring program bore fruit last year, with no cases of birds being infected with botulism reported late last year or early early this year.
Each year, black-faced spoonbills migrate from the Korean peninsula and northeastern China to the Chiku wetlands.
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