A baboon yesterday died after being captured in Taoyuan due to wounds allegedly inflicted by a hunting rifle, Taoyuan authorities said.
The animal had been spotted several times in the city’s Pingjhen District (平鎮) over the past 17 days.
It was spotted in a residence at about 3:10pm yesterday.
Photo courtesy of a reader via CNA
The owner of the house informed the bureau and it was captured at about 3:25pm using a tranquilizer dart, a Taoyuan Agriculture Bureau official said.
The baboon was allegedly found to have been wounded by a hunting rifle, the bureau said.
Based on a veterinarian’s advice, it was rushed to Leofoo Village Theme Park for treatment, but to no avail, the bureau said.
The case has been reported to the police as the city government personnel who were tasked with capturing the animal had only been equipped with dart guns, it said.
Under the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), people found killing protected animals for no reason face a fine of up to NT$1 million (US$32,925) and a maximum of five years in jail.
The baboon was first spotted on March 10 near a local factory in the central Taoyuan area, Jhensing Borough (振興) Warden Huang Chih-chieh (黃志杰) said.
After it was spotted a second time on March 18, he notified Leofoo Village and asked for help in capturing the animal, Huang said.
Leofoo Village representatives said that the baboon had not escaped from the park, which is about 12km from Pingjhen District.
Taoyuan’s Animal Protection Office said it has no record of baboons registered to owners in Taoyuan, which means the animal might have been kept there illegally or was abandoned by owners from another city or county.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater