A man in Nantou County has been fined for selling two feathers belonging to a class 1 protected mountain eagle-hawk, a species protected by the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法).
The ruling by the Nantou District Court last week, convicting the man, surnamed Ho (何), to a six-month sentence for contravening the act. He was found guilty of breaching Article 35 of the act, which states that “Protected wildlife and its products shall not be traded or displayed or exhibited in public areas without the permission of the Authorities,” the ruling said.
Although the court handed him a six-month term, it granted Ho a suspended sentence and placed him on probation for two years and imposing an NT$40,000 fine on him in lieu of serving time in prison, the ruling said.
Photo courtesy of Sun Yuan-hsun
The case stemmed from June 2022, when Ho went on the Tataka Hiking Trail (塔塔加登山步道) — the starting point for hiking Yushan (玉山) or Jade Mountain, the nation’s highest peak at 3,952m in elevation.
He said he had picked up two feathers laying on the trail, which lies within Yushan National Park, and took them back to his residence in Nantou City.
Both feathers were from a male mountain eagle-hawk or Spizaetus nipalensis, commonly referred to as a “bear hawk” (熊鷹), listed as a class 1 protected species under the Wildlife Conservation Act and is listed as an endangered raptor species.
Four days later, Ho took photos for an online post, listing a NT$10,000 price on the online auction site Shoppee. Someone perusing the site reported the posting to the police upon seeing the pictures, knowing that the feathers came from a protected raptor species.
Nantou City police went to Ho’s residence and confiscated the feathers for an investigation, later confirming that they came from a mountain eagle-hawk, an examination by experts from the Wildlife Conservation Service Center at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology found.
The judges granted him a suspended sentence, citing Ho as being aged 23 at the time with no prior criminal records, and having admitted to his wrongdoing and confessing to having neglected to check protected wildlife statutes, promising he would not make the same mistake again.
After years of lobbying by animal rights groups, all raptor species are legally protected under the Wildlife Conservation Act.
Bear hawks are the nation’s largest year-long resident raptor species, with a habitat range in mid-to-low altitude areas and mountain forests. It has an average body length at between 70cm to 80cm, and a wingspan of about 150cm to 160cm, investigators said.
Raptor experts estimate that there are about 1,000 individual eagle-hawks in Taiwan, and that they can be seen gliding high in the air at Yushan National Park and the Tataka trail areas.
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