An animal rights group on Thursday called for a ban on raising or trading Formosan rock macaques, after releasing a video showing captive primates being abused, including one incident of a monkey chained along a hiking trail as entertainment for tourists.
In the video released at a news conference in Taipei hosted by the Environmental and Animal Society of Taiwan, Taiwan Macaque Coexistence Promotion Association and Taiwan Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, among others, a man is heard talking about how he keeps a captive macaque a manageable size.
“An older man advised me that it’s better not to give it water,” he says. “It would otherwise get bigger. See it is still small? This is because I never give it water.”
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Advocates said the man in the video had kept the monkey captive for eight or nine years since it was an infant.
In most cases, the Formosan rock macaques, the nation’s only endemic primates, are poached as babies in incidents that “involve the deaths of their mothers,” two women interviewed in the video say.
Because Formosan rock macaques and their babies usually hold each other tightly, some poachers kill the mothers and set off fireworks to scare the infants to loosen their grasp so they can take them, the women say.
In one scene, a man is shown putting a macaque’s paw into a miniature guillotine and feigning triggering the device. In another, a monkey is shown chained along a hiking trail for the purpose of entertaining tourists.
The video also documented a Formosan rock macaque, which had reportedly been held in captivity for 12 years and had hair loss on its tail, walking continuously in a circle in a small cage.
Another monkey, allegedly confined to a cage for eight years, is seen covering itself with a blanket and kowtowing repeatedly.
The groups said that abuse similar to that shown in the video had “run rampant” since 2019, when the Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau removed the Formosan rock macaque from its “protected species” list and categorized them as “general wildlife” under the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法).
At the time, the council said that Formosan rock macaque numbers had “stabilized” and their habitats were “well maintained.”
The move was seen by animal rights advocates as bowing to the demands of farmers who wanted to legally remove monkeys that had damaged their crops.
Since the reclassification, animal rights groups have set up hotlines for the public to report incidents of Formosan rock macaques being held in captivity illegally, and have since received 151 reports.
Under the Wildlife Conservation Act, hunting, raising or trading “protected species” is prohibited, with contraveners facing fines of NT$300,000 to NT$1.5 million (US$10,303 to US$51,515) along with a maximum jail sentence of five years.
People convicted of poaching animals categorized as “general wildlife” face a more lenient fine of NT$60,000 to NT$300,000, with no criminal penalty.
Raising, trading or hunting animals in the category is permitted in certain circumstances, including for example for farmers seeking to protect their crops.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬), who also spoke at the news conference, demanded the Forestry Bureau draw up new rules to crack down on the poaching, breeding and trading of Formosan rock macaques.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS