People can support effort to conserve wildlife habitats in lowland hilly areas by donating at 7-Eleven convenience stores nationwide this month, the Society of Wilderness said yesterday.
Lowland hills refers to natural environments at elevations up to 800m between mountains and urban areas — where human communities and natural ecosystems directly intersect, the society said.
Society standing director Chen Hsien-cheng (陳憲政) said 51 of the more than 90 wildlife habitats in Taiwan that the society has been monitoring are in lowland hill areas.
Photo courtesy of the Society of Wilderness
The society’s conservation efforts can be divided into four categories: urban park rewilding, species-oriented habitat conservation, restoring lowland habitat connectivity and minimizing artificial interference in nature, he said.
For example, the society in 2004 adopted Fuyang Eco Park (富陽自然生態公園) in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) to conduct rewilding, with the goal of rebuilding it into an area where wildlife can thrive while people can use it for leisure activities, Chen said.
The society has also dedicated itself to lowland habitat restoration via land acquisition and has four woodland plots in Yilan County’s Dongshan Township (冬山), Taipei’s Sijhih District (汐止), Miaoli County’s Shihtan Township (獅潭) and Hsinchu County’s Hengshan Township (橫山), he said.
Interference by humans in the conservation areas has been minimized to create environments favorable to protecting wildlife and increasing biodiversity, he added.
Careful assessments are made before selecting and purchasing plots for habitat conservation, he said.
For example, the society acquired the Shihtan plot, as it covers corridors used by leopard cats, he said.
However, land prices can be high and regulations on land acquisition are an obstacle, Chen said, citing the Hengshan plot, which was acquired with assistance from 400 people, as it includes designated farmland, which the Agricultural Development Act (農業發展條例) stipulates cannot be purchased by non-governmental bodies such as the society.
Owners usually would not want to sell woodland if farmland in it is not included, he said.
The society mobilized 400 volunteers to collectively purchase the farmland at the Hengshan plot, enabling the society to gain the rights to use the farmland for conservation purposes, he said, adding that the idea was suggested by former Academia Sinica Institute of Economics dean Hsiao Tai-chi (蕭代基).
The society in 2021 began collaborating with Uni-President Enterprises Corp to collect donations at 7-Eleven stores, Chen said.
The donations collected this month would mainly be used to bolster the more than 1,000 environmental education and volunteer training programs launched by the society nationwide this year, he said.
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