A black bear was found in a trap this morning in Chiayi County’s Alishan Township (阿里山), Chiayi County Councilor Wu Ching-shan (武清山) said today, after a series of sightings in recent weeks.
The Chiayi branch of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency said it was alerted immediately and dispatched personnel from the local work station to monitor the situation.
Veterinarians were also dispatched from the Ministry of Agriculture’s Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute in Nantou County’s Jiji Township (集集) to assess the bear’s health and condition, it said.
Photo courtesy of Chiayi County Councilor Wu Ching-shan
As the bear has been roaming too close to human settlements, posing a risk to lives and property, it is to be released into a remote area to ensure the safety of the local community, it added.
From Dec. 31 until Tuesday, nine bear sightings have been reported around Dabang (達邦), Leye (樂野) and Lijia (里佳) villages, the office said, adding that residents have also reported damage to beehives and food being rummaged from construction site refrigerators.
Locals reported that a bear had broken into workers’ sheds in Dabang Village on Jan. 3 and 4, while bear droppings and tracks were spotted in vegetable patches in Lijia, it said.
On Jan. 17, a resident of Dabang’s Daptuana area reported that a beehive had been dragged, damaged and gnawed on by a bear, it added.
The next day, the branch captured infrared images of the bear.
As the animal had a distinctive white patch above its left eye, experts believe it is the same bear that was spotted on Jan. 3, it said.
The office said it then launched monitoring and trapping operations, setting up two live-capture traps with longan honey, bananas and wild winter honey as bait, and enlisted the Cou Hunters Association for assistance.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS