The Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) is to create a passageway for land crabs and a warning system for leopard cats in a bid to reduce road deaths of the protected animals.
Highway No. 26 runs through Kenting National Park’s Banana Bay (香蕉灣), which is considered to be a paradise for land crabs, DGH deputy chief engineer Lee Chung-chang (李忠彰) said on Friday.
Citing studies conducted by Liu Hung-chang (劉烘昌) of Providence University in 2009 and 2010, Lee said that 39 species of land crabs live in Kenting.
Between Banana Bay and Shadao (砂島) along Highway No. 26, researchers have identified 20 species, making it the most diverse area in the world for land crabs, Lee said.
However, the crabs need to cross the highway to lay eggs in the sea, he said.
The DGH has been working with the Kenting National Park Administration since last month to control the traffic in the section between kilometer marks 39.5 and 41.5, as the peak spawning season for female land crabs generally occurs during the evening of the 15th, 16th and 17th days of the seventh, eighth and ninth months of the lunar calendar, he said.
To facilitate the crabs’ crossing, the DGH has restricted traffic from four lanes to two, Lee said.
“The entire section will close every 10 minutes during traffic-control hours for 10 minutes. When access is reopened, road users should drive slower than 30kph so the crabs can cross safely,” he said.
The DGH and National Tsing Hua University professor Tseng Ching-hsien (曾晴賢) have covered the upper part of the roadside culvert at kilometer mark 39.75 with tarpaulin to block the crabs from crossing, he added.
Instead, they can safely make their way to the sea along rope ladders installed inside the culvert.
Land crabs have trouble climbing on tarpaulin and prefer to climb on rough surfaces like rope, Lee said.
Tseng and his research team have installed two cameras at the culvert to monitor the crabs.
Since last month, the roadkill rate has dropped to 1.5 percent from 7.5 percent during the period last year, he said.
Leopard cats in 2008 were listed as a protected species based on the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), Lee said, adding there are about 500 leopard cats in the mountainous areas of Miaoli, Taichung and Nantou counties.
The DGH is working with the Endemic Species Research Institute to reduce the roadkill rate of leopard cats on highways No. 3 and No. 26, particularly in Miaoli County’s Juolan Township (卓蘭) and Nantou County’s Jiji Township (集集), Lee said.
The DGH also aims to work with National Chung Hsing University to develop an alert system to install in zones where leopard cats are frequently killed by traffic, Lee said.
The system would sound an alarm and flash a light at the bushes when it senses a vehicle approaching, which would temporarily scare off leopard cats that are about to cross the highway, he said.
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