The Hsinchu District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday asked a court for stiff sentences in a case against a logging ring that allegedly traversed local mountains cutting down valuable timber and poaching Formosan black bears, one of the nation’s endangered species, for their paws.
Fifteen suspects were charged with breaches of the Forestry Act (森林法) and the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), prosecutors said.
The charges followed an announcement by the Hsinchu Forest District Office on Thursday that police in Hsinchu County had arrested an illegal logging ring, confiscating timber valued at more than NT$1 million (US$33,857).
The loggers, colloquially known as “mountain rats,” allegedly felled Taiwanese red and yellow cypress trees over a long period in Guanwu (觀霧), a state-owned mountainous area, the office said.
The group was led by a man surnamed Ho (何), 52, and most of the loggers were relatives, it said.
In a May 7 raid, 50 police officers and 36 forestry workers conducted a raid that detained 15 people, including Ho and two timber brokers, and seized 162.9kg of timber — five blocks of cypress wood and seven of stout camphor, the office said.
A special joint task force — composed of the Hsinchu District Prosecutors’ Office, the National Police Agency and the Forestry Bureau — investigated the group’s operations for months prior to the raid, it added.
On the raid, police found bear fur and remains, and confiscated photographs from Ho’s smartphone showing him with a dead Formosan black bear, the office said.
Formosan black bears are listed as an endangered species in Taiwan and are protected by law.
The office quoted Ho as saying that the bear was accidentally caught in a trap set to catch animals stealing the loggers’ food, but no one in the group had dared to approach and free the bear — so they had killed it with a homemade hunting gun.
Additional reporting by Hung Mei-hsiu and CNA
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