The Penghu County Government plans to protect cacti that grow on the county’s 90 islands because they are threatened by an increasing number of prickly pear pickers. Although cacti are endemic to Penghu County, their economic value has only recently been noticed because of the development of tourism.
Prickly pears — fruits from a variety of cactus — are now used to make pastries, juice, vinegar, ice cream or as a cooking ingredient.
“As prickly pears gain popularity, more people in Penghu now work as part-time cactus fruit pickers for extra income,” Penghu County Government’s Agriculture and Fisheries Bureau Director Cheng Ming-yuan (鄭明源) said via a telephone interview. “This is good news and bad news at the same time.”
The good news is that the growing popularity of prickly pears has created a new industry in Penghu, with the county government planning to create cactus farms and encourage cactus horticulture. However, the bad news is that inappropriate practices in picking the fruit are threatening wild cacti in the county, Cheng said.
“For example, in order to get to the center of a cactus bush to get to the fruit, some people place large wooden boards horizontally over the bush and simply walk into it using the board,” he said. “Cacti on the perimeter of the bush wind up dead when they do that.”
Because of inappropriate fruit picking practices, Cheng said he has observed a decline in cactus vegetation in some areas of the county and is worried that wild cacti may soon disappear if the county government doesn’t intervene.
“We do realize that we can’t have people patrolling cacti since we don’t have that many people and that much money. But we’ll try to ask each village to take care of the cactus fields near them. We’ll also leave space in between cacti so that the fruit can be more accessible to pickers,” he said.
Rain is to increase from Wednesday morning as Severe Tropical Storm Kong-Rey approaches, with sea warnings to be issued as early as tomorrow afternoon, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. As of 8am, Kong-Rey was 1,050km east-southeast of the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春) heading in a northwesterly direction toward Taiwan, CWA Forecast Center Director Lin Po-tung (林伯東) said. Rainfall is to increase from Wednesday morning, especially in northern Taiwan and Yilan County, he said. A sea warning is possible from tomorrow afternoon, while a land warning may be issued on Wednesday morning, he added. Kong-Rey may intensify into a moderate typhoon as it passes
Hong Kong singer Andy Lau’s (劉德華) concert in Taipei tonight has been cancelled due to Typhoon Kong-rei and is to be held at noon on Saturday instead, the concert organizer SuperDome said in a statement this afternoon. Tonight’s concert at Taipei Arena was to be the first of four consecutive nightly performances by Lau in Taipei, but it was called off at the request of Taipei Metro, the operator of the venue, due to the weather, said the organizer. Taipei Metro said the concert was cancelled out of consideration for the audience’s safety. The decision disappointed a number of Lau’s fans who had
Taiwan yesterday issued warnings to four Chinese coast guard vessels that intruded into restricted waters around the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen Islands, according to the Coast Guard Administration (CGA). The four China Coast Guard ships were detected approaching restricted waters south of Kinmen at around 2 pm yesterday, the CGA’s Kinmen-Matsu Branch said in a statement. The CGA said it immediately deployed four patrol boats to closely monitor the situation. When the Chinese ships with the hull numbers "14512," "14609," "14603" and "14602" separately entered the restricted waters off Fuhsing islet (復興嶼), Zhaishan (翟山), Sinhu (新湖) and Liaoluo (料羅) at 3 pm, the Taiwanese patrol
MUCH-NEEDED: After China demonstrated its capabilities to deploy vertical launching systems, Taiwan needs air defense systems such as NASAMS, a defense expert said The US’ approval of exports of three advanced air defense missile systems to Taiwan signified NATO’s goodwill toward the nation, a Taiwanese defense expert said. The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Friday announced the US$1.16 billion sale of the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) and the US$828 million sale of AN/TPS-77 and AN/TPS-78 radar turnkey systems. The NASAMS is a network that uses ground-launched Air Intercept Missile (AIM)-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) to intercept hostile aircraft, drones and cruise missiles. Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), director of defense strategy and resources at the state-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said