Police on Sunday arrested four Pingtung County men on suspicion of poaching, after finding a Formosan sika deer carcass and two unregistered rifles in a truck during a traffic stop in Kenting National Park.
In the past few weeks, residents have accused local authorities of not doing enough to stop poachers amid reports of gunshots late at night and finding a deer carcass stripped of its antlers.
Kenting Police Station Deputy Chief Tsai Ching-yuan (蔡慶源) of Pingtung County Police Bureau’s Hengchun Precinct (恆春) said four people aged 20 to 22 were apprehended early on Sunday morning, after officers stopped their truck on Provincial Highway No. 26 in Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻).
Photo courtesy of the Pingtung County Police Bureau
After searching the vehicle, police found the deer carcass with a gunshot wound, along with two unregistered rifles, ammunition and other equipment, police said.
Tsai identified the suspects by their surnames — Wang (王), Tsao (曹), Han (韓) and Chiu (邱) — adding that the case has been handed over to prosecutors to determine if the suspects should be formally charged with poaching in a national park and illegal firearm possession.
Poaching in a national park is illegal under Article 13 of the National Park Act (國家公園法).
Police are investigating whether the suspects belong to a larger criminal organization, as they are not locals, but are from Pingtung’s Majia Township (瑪家), about 100km north of Hengchun Township, Tsai said.
Majia’s main population is indigenous Paiwan people.
The men told police they had killed the deer for its meat for personal consumption, news reports said.
Under amended articles of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法), indigenous people are permitted to own rifles, which must be registered with the authorities, for hunting certain wildlife for personal use, but only during specific times and on their own traditional hunting grounds.
Poaching in Kenting National Park gained national attention after a resident of Hengchun’s Sheding (社頂) community, which overlaps with the park, on Tuesday last week posted a photograph on Facebook of a Formosan sika deer that had been shot dead and its antlers removed.
The person said they heard a gunshot early on Thursday morning and later found the deer carcass about 20m behind their house.
“Kenting is a paradise for poachers,” they wrote, adding that authorities were not doing enough to investigate illegal hunting.
A native species of Taiwan, Formosan sika deer were hunted to extinction in the wild in 1969, but Kenting National Park’s Formosan Sika Deer Restoration Program, launched in 1984 with Taipei Zoo, has helped reintroduce the deer, with their population rising to more than 2,000 in the Hengchun area, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association says on its Web site.
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