Nantou County authorities on Tuesday raided a hideout in Jhushan Township (竹山) and detained six Vietnamese who had allegedly been poaching protected trees in the surrounding mountainous area.
National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials said that after receiving information about a group of runaway migrant workers engaged in illegal activities, they coordinated with local police and Nantou’s Military Police Command to conduct the operation.
“All six people arrested were found to be Vietnamese, led by a man surnamed Nguyen. They were all wanted by authorities, as they had run away from their registered work contracts and were hiding from their employers,” NIA Special Operation Corps in Nantou head Chen Chieh-chang (陳介章) said.
Chen said the six had been cutting down protected trees, which they trimmed down to wooden blocks to sell to criminal organizations.
Authorities searching the hideout found 23 blocks of Taiwan cypress, three blocks of red cedar, wood carving equipment and other tools, he said.
“We also found what is suspected to be amphetamine powder and drug paraphernalia, along with NT$33,000 in cash,” Chen said.
The suspects attempted to escape by jumping through windows and breaking out the backdoor, but police, having staked out the location, surrounded and apprehended the six, he said.
Nantou prosecutors have been questioning the suspects to determine the ringleader.
Prosecutors said they intend to press charges on violations of the Forestry Act (森林法), the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) and the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
Forestry Bureau official Lee Yen-shou (李炎壽), who is head of the Nantou Forest District Office, said the valuable protected species have been threatened by forest poachers, known in Taiwan as “mountain rats” (山老鼠).
“Over the past few years, we have seen a surge in migrant workers who escape their legal work contracts and increasingly find work as mountain rats, plundering forests and conducting other illegal activities in mountainous areas,” Lee said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS