Public prosecutors indicted 10 people, including five Taiwanese and five Vietnamese undocumented workers, on suspicion of illegal logging in the mountains in Nantou County.
The suspects, alleged members of a criminal ring operating in high mountain regions, and businesspeople who buy and sell cut-up wood blocks were charged with breaching the Forestry Act (森林法), Nantou County prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday last week.
Authorities over the past few years said they have found that an increasing number of Vietnamese migrant workers are participating in such activities, resigning from legal work contracts and becoming undocumented to take on jobs in the underground economy.
Photo courtesy of the Nantou District Prosecutors’ Office
Authorities in January said they were alerted by a group of hikers about a cut down ancient Taiwan cypress tree.
The hikers were on a trail on Nantou’s Mahaipu Fuji Mountain (馬海僕富士山) near Aowanda Forest (奧萬大森林) when they came upon the chopped down tree, with trash strewn on the ground nearby, authorities said.
The hikers heard people fleeing the site, allegedly speaking a foreign language, took photographs of the scene and reported it to the authorities, they said.
“It was very painful to see the body of this ‘sacred tree’ cut open and chopped into pieces,” they quoted one hiker as saying, adding that he wanted authorities to catch the criminals.
Investigators and personnel from the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency made several trips to the site for months, conducting searches and gathering evidence, during which they found four more cut down Taiwan cypress trees.
The trees would not survive and were condemned to die, forestry personnel said.
Taiwan in 2015 under the Forestry Act listed 12 tree species, mainly deemed as valuable native trees, as protected trees and prohibited their logging and trading. Those include the indigenous Taiwan cypress, Taiwan incense cedar, stout camphor, Formosan Lunta fir and Taiwan sassafras.
Prosecutors said that they tracked down five Vietnamese undocumented migrant workers who were allegedly doing illegal logging and five Taiwanese, headed by a man surnamed Wu (吳), who were allegedly illegally trading protected trees’ logs.
About 1.2 tonnes of wood were logged, which were worth an estimated NT$25 million (US$814,226), they said.
During questioning, a Vietnamese criminal ring headed by a man surnamed Nguyen admitted that five of their members had gone to the mountains in Nantou’s Renai Township (仁愛), set up camps to locate large valuable hardwood trees, cut them into blocks, carried them to trucks for transport, then contacted Wu and his associates, as Taiwan has a thriving underground market for wood, which would be used for wooden sculptures and furniture.
People convicted of contravening the Forestry Act could get a maximum of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of NT$20 million, prosecutors said.
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