Tue, Jun 20, 2023 page2

• Officials call to protect macaques

  ‘UNIQUE SPECIES’: The lack of legal protection of the animals has led to people hunting, capturing and selling them to be raised as pets, the Control Yuan said

  • By Yang Cheng-yu and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  The Forestry Bureau has failed to impose measures to protect macaques, which were removed from the country’s protected species list in 2019, three Control Yuan members said on Saturday.

  Macaques were removed from Taiwan’s list of protected species in 2019, but due to a lack of supporting measures, incidents of harassment, hunting and capture of the animals continue to occur, Control Yuan members Yeh Ta-hua (葉大華), Pasuya Poiconu (浦忠成) and Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said.

  The three members submitted a report on the conditions macaques face, in which they called on the Council of Agriculture — which oversees the Forestry Bureau — to review and improve laws governing the protection of wildlife, including macaques.

  

  Formosan macaques are pictured in Hualien on May 2.

  Photo: Yu Tai-lang, Taipei Times

  The members said that although there are laws that prevent the public from owning and raising animals classified as protected — except where permission is granted, such as for zoos — no such laws exist for non-protected wild animals.

  The lack of such laws has resulted in people capturing macaques to raise them privately, and in some cases killing females to capture their infants, they said.

  The members said their investigation uncovered 151 cases of people raising macaques, with some reportedly buying the animals for NT$50,000 to NT$60,000 each.

  People selling the animals said that killing macaque mothers was necessary to capture their infants, the members said.

  The members reported having found macaques kept in “harsh conditions,” including in small cages or tied down with iron chains, which “limited their range of activities.”

  Some owners of macaques limited the amount of water given to them, as they believed that doing so would prevent them from growing too large, the members said, adding that this harms the mental and physical development of the animals.

  The members said that although the macaques are no longer on the protected species list, they are unique to Taiwan and should be protected by law.

  The habitats of macaques overlap with those of humans in several parts of Taiwan proper, which in many cases has been used as an excuse for their capture — particularly in areas where the animals affect local agriculture, the report said.

  Although Article 21 of the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) stipulates that wild animals can be hunted or slaughtered, the Council of Agriculture has not clearly established criteria to determine whether wild animals are “harmful to agricultural and forestry crops, poultry, livestock or aquaculture,” leaving local governments to interpret the law on a case-by-case basis, they said.

  The report made suggestions about the rescue and release of macaques into the wild, including the potential to release the animals on Taiwan’s uninhabited islands.

  The members have commissioned National Pingtung University of Science and Technology to study the feasibility of that option, they said.

  The report said that no survey of the macaque population has been conducted since 2000, when there were an estimated 10,404 groups of macaques accounting for its population of 260,000 in Taiwan.

  A new survey should be conducted to better understand how the macaque population has changed over the two decades, and how human activities have affected the animal, it said.
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