The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency’s Pingtung Branch has initiated a public-private collaboration on Taipei frog conservation, with the goal of restoring the species by 2030.
The branch on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding for the collaboration with seven organizations across industry, government and academia, including the National Science and Technology Council’s Southern Taiwan Science Park Bureau, the Kaohsiung Agriculture Bureau and Synbio Tech Inc (生合生技).
Branch director Lee Cheng-hsien (李政賢) said the Taipei frog, or Hylarana taipehensis, is listed as a rare and valuable species in Taiwan and is facing threats from habitat fragmentation and population decline.
Photo: Screen grab from the Web site of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency’s Pingtung Branch
Nearly 60 percent of Taiwan’s threatened species, including the Taipei frog, inhabit areas outside natural reserves, making the Taiwan Ecological Network program indispensable for restoring their fragmented habitats, he said.
Synbio Tech has adopted about three hectares of green space within the Kaohsiung Science Park as part of the collaboration and would use nature-based carbon reduction techniques to restore these areas into Taipei frog habitats.
Agency official Wang Chao-hua (汪昭華) said the Taipei frog was once widely distributed nationwide, from Taipei to Pingtung County, but it has become rare due to land development and pesticide use.
The agency would not only promote frog breeding initiatives, but would also support habitat restoration projects through its certification mechanism for other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM), she said.
In related news, the agency on Wednesday last week issued OECM certificates of support to 62 sites and recognized three additional sites as OECM candidates.
The total area of sites with OECM certification is 2,916 hectares, with property owners ranging from government agencies and businesses to schools, civic groups, and private landowners, the agency said.
That reflects broad participation across multiple sectors of society in promoting terrestrial OECM in Taiwan in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity, it said.
Most sites are located within the national ecological network, covering forests, farmlands, rivers, wetlands, as well as streams and green spaces in urban areas, it said.
Agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) said many of the sites have long been part of the government’s biodiversity conservation or environmentally friendly policies, such as the program for adopting marginal state-owned land not open to the public, the ecosystem services payment program and the Satoyama Initiative.
The OECM certification helps publicize the environmental contributions made by these sites and reflects the economic, social, and cultural benefits derived from their ecological conservation efforts, he said.
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