The Taipei City Animal Protection Office hopes schools can adopt more stray animals to alleviate the pressure on the city’s shelters, which are over capacity, the office said on Saturday.
A ban on euthanizing stray animals that went into effect on Feb. 4, 2017, resulted in nearly 1,000 strays for the city’s shelters to take in, it said.
The office in 2015 began working with the city’s Department of Education and other groups to promote the adoption of strays by public schools, but so far only 33 of the city’s 236 public schools have taken in animals, it said.
“Adoption is not something we can force. Schools have to be willing to take in the animals,” the department said.
There were 989 strays in the city’s shelters as of last month — 674 dogs and 315 cats — the office said.
The office said it hopes the city’s stray dogs could be adopted as inspection animals for customs officials, companion dogs for people with anxiety or other issues, service dogs for blind people, or other roles where they could serve people.
It also hopes that more of the city’s schools would adopt stray cats and dogs as school pets, which could reduce the pressure on the shelters, it said.
“As of September, 33 schools in Taipei had collectively adopted 30 dogs and 50 cats,” department Director Chen Yi-tsung (諶亦聰) said, adding that the department has provided those schools with equipment to help care for the animals, and has provided subsidies for vaccinations and animal feed.
Caring for the animals complements the schools’ biology classes and gives the students a better appreciation for animal life, she said.
Keelung’s Mingde Municipal Junior High School has also adopted cats and dogs from Taipei shelters, she said.
Shilin High School of Commerce in Taipei took in three dogs and 10 cats all at once — more than any other school that is working with the department on animal adoption, she said.
The department has given the school NT$470,000 in subsidies, she said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS