The Forestry Bureau yesterday said it planned to establish a new wildlife management area — the nation’s largest — in the Danda (丹大) area of Nantou County, amid renewed efforts to monitor and protect the environment and promote biological diversity and a sustainable ecological environment.
The bureau said it would develop the protected area in terms of the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法). It will consist of 109,952 hectares in the mountainous area, making it the country’s largest wildlife conservation area.
The Nantou Forest District Office said the planned Danda -wildlife conservation area contains a diverse array of organisms. Aside from rare animals, there are also rare plants, such as red and yellow cypresses, Taiwan yews, firs, Torreya trees and orchids, as well as plant species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
Photo: Courtesy of the Nantou Forest District Office
The bureau’s monitoring records show that endangered mammals in the area include Formosan macaques, pangolins, Formosan clouded leopards, Formosan bears, yellow-throated martens, ferrets, weasels, brown Mino cats, muntjacs, Taiwan mountain goats and Formosan sambars.
The protected bird species are also diverse and include the crested goshawk, the crested serpent eagle, the forest eagle, the bear eagle, the Swinhoe’s pheasant, the green pigeon, the brown wood owl, the grey owl, the spotted Scops owl (Otus spilocephalus), the small swallowtail, the white-tailed robin, the yellow-bellied fairy flycatcher, the Huangshan bird, the green-backed tit, the Taiwan Dai Ju and the Taiwan blue magpie.
Liu Fu-cheng (劉福成), director of the forest’s district office, said ecological conservation was an important international issue and the creation of the conservation area would help protect biological diversity and provide useful resources for ecological research and monitoring.
Human intrusion has caused a lot of damage to natural habitats and the task of ecological monitoring and management is now more important than ever, he said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS