The introduction of the Satoyama Initiative to Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃) has seen incredible success and proved that a win-win situation is achievable in terms of agricultural production while protecting the environment, Kaohsiung Bureau of Agriculture officials said.
“Satoyama” is a Japanese term applied to a border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land and can be defined as an entire landscape used for agriculture, containing a mosaic of mixed forests, rice paddy fields, dry rice fields, grasslands and various bodies of water.
Meinong has long been a key agricultural production area in the region, while offering Kaohsiung residents the beautiful scenery of rural villages, farmland and rivers.
Photo: Chen Wen-chan, Taipei Times
Bureau officials said Meinong residents voted to implement the Satoyama Iniative and that the bureau is conducting a biodiversity inspection in the Meinong area — the first of its kind in the nation.
Officials said the inspection is expected to take six to 12 months to complete, adding that it is concentrating its efforts on the district’s rice paddies, wild lotus and mixed grains.
Although only two months into the general inspection, bureau officials said they have already discovered the presence of painted snipe, a creature listed as a class-two protected species, adding that the rice paddies are also home to the rarely seen Onychothemis testacea tonkinensis, a species of dragonfly that usually makes its home midstream or downstream in clean rivers.
Officials said they also found another class-two protected species, the black-winged kite, and a class-three protected species, the Oriental pratincole, in the cornfields, with the former hunting Arvicolinae for food and the latter feeding off insects.
Of note is the change in focus of the inspection area, which is usually centered on woodlands, the bureau said, adding that most of the newly discovered animals had appeared in fields, which helps to analyze in greater detail types of produce grown and fields that adopt organic farming.
There is evidence to suggest that eco-friendly farming is safest, both for the produce grown and for the ecology, the bureau said, adding that it has contributed to creating environmentally friendly farming.
“The bureau plans to produce data on the habitats of animals in the changing landscape around Meinong’s farms,” bureau official Lin Chih-hsien (林志嫺) said.
The bureau also plans to publish a book examining how the district has successfully combined ecological conservation with agricultural activity, Lin added.
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