Taipei police on Saturday said that they are looking for a man accused of killing a goose on National Taiwan University’s (NTU) campus.
The goose, which lived with a flock of other geese at the university’s Drunken Moon Lake (醉月湖), was thought to have gone missing or died of natural causes until a post on NTU’s online student bulletin board said that a man had killed the bird on March 22.
In the post, an anonymous person said that student bird lovers arrived at the conclusion after combing through footage from security cameras around the campus.
Photo: Kuo An-chia, Taipei Times
A man was recorded approaching the lake empty-handed from the direction of an open-air restaurant called Soulba at 4:58am, and two minutes later left the lake area with what looked like a dead goose, the post said.
The man was then seen walking with a laden cardboard box and getting on a bicycle near the Core Subjects Building, the post said, adding that he left the campus from near the New Moon Pavillion (新月台) at 5:09am, or about 11 minutes after he was first sighted.
The school has reported the case to the police in Daan District (大安).
Lin Ting-chun (林庭君), acting supervisor of the Taipei City Animal Protection Office’s animal rescue team, said that the office is working with police to find out what happened, but added that the man might not have done anything illegal.
The office has found that the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) does not apply in this case, because geese are not a protected species and the NTU campus is not a recognized wildlife habitat, he said.
The Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) would also not apply if the goose is not considered the university’s property, she said.
It would have to be proven that the man killed the goose and that the bird was the school’s property, she said.
Police late Saturday said that, preliminarily, they considered the goose to be the school’s property because campus janitors regularly fed it.
Under the Animal Protection Act, the unlawful killing of animals is punishable by up to two years in prison, commutable to a fine of NT$200,000 to NT$2 million (US$7,033 to US$70,333).
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