A Kaohsiung city councilor is urging the central government to allocate much-needed funding for the establishment of a permanent administrative office to oversee the operation of a nature park in the southern city.
Shoushan Park was upgraded into a national park in 2011 on the recommendation of Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) to then-premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), now the vice president. The park was declared “open to public” in December of the same year, and the preparatory office of the Shoushan National Nature Park was set up until a permanent park administration could be established.
However, more than three years later, the preparatory office is still running the park on a provisional basis, propped up by temporarily allocated staff and a woefully inadequate budget, critics have said.
Kaohsiung City Councilor Chien Huan-tsung (簡煥宗) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that he contacted park authorities after receiving public complaints about the park, only to find that it suffers from a critical shortage of funds and continues to be administered by a provisional office.
Chien said that the park authority had not done any improvements to the area since it was elevated into a national park, and existing facilities had become dilapidated.
Chien praised park officials for their dedication and hard work, but said there was only so much they could do with their limited funding, which is barely enough to pay for the cost of maintaining drainage ditches and paths.
The 1,123-hectare park consists of four smaller subdivisions of reserves and cut across many administrative districts of Kaohsiung. It is home to a diverse range of species and landscapes important to tourism and the environment, including the Formosan rock macaque, more than 800 species of plants, coral reefs, limestone mounds and chandelier caves.
Chien said that Shoushan Park is a conservation project that is vital to Kaohsiung residents, the environment and tourism.
He urged the central government to allocate the necessary funding for park authorities and to work with the Kaohsiung City Government.
“Three years of preparation are too long,” Chien said.
Sources from the park’s prepatory office said that they were grateful to Chien for speaking up and that they would do their best to care for the park, but that their budget was inadequate.
Park officials said that the current state of the park is embarrassing, but they have received word that a central government initiative to restructure park administrations is deadlocked and Shoushan is low on its priority list.
Kaohsiung City Government officials expressed concern over the situation, adding that the failure to install a permanent park office was likely the result of stalled legislation on national parks.
The bill, which is currently in limbo, calls for the upgrading of the Environmental Protection Administration to the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, and the National Parks Department to the National Parks Administration.
City officials urged the Legislative Yuan to put the bill on its agenda for the next session and for the central government to allocate a budget for Shoushan Park as soon as it clears the legislature.
Otherwise, the promises of Wu would lose credibility, they said.
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