Thoughts on events surrounding the third phase expansion of the Taiwan Central Science Park. This is from an interview conducted by Bryan Chuang for the industry journal Digitimes and was published on 11 February 2010

The Supreme Administrative Court recently decided to cancel the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the third phase expansion of the Central Taiwan Science Park (hereafter “third expansion”), and now businesses invested in the expansion project can no longer pull out or forge ahead with the development. This case highlights problems with the EIA process, and makes us wonder if the government believes it has the responsibility to self-reflect. If the National Science Council (NSC) and government officials decide not to abide by court decisions, how can ordinary citizens be expected to follow the law?

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Smangus Tribal Council Secretary
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　2010.02.09

The Taiwan High Court has officially acquitted three Smangus men who had been convicted of stealing government property when they removed a fallen Beech tree after a storm. This news not only represents a victory for the Smangus people, but it also has implications for the self-governance of all indigenous people in Taiwan. Such a ruling also serves to indicate that the Taiwan Supreme Court takes very seriously the issue of basic rights for indigenous people.

We are thankful for all the support we have received in relation to the Smangus Beech Tree Incident. Over the last four years, many have helped us in the fight for equality and freedom. This ruling brings us joy and at the same time gives us confidence and assurance that we can continue to move forward.

Additionally, in 2009 President Ma's administration signed both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which declare the importance of every people's right to self-determination and that all nationalities are free to decide their own political status and freely pursue their own economic, social, and cultural development. Similarly, article 4 of Taiwan's Aboriginal Basic Law states that "The government shall in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples ensure the equal status and self-development of aboriginals, and implement indigenous autonomy," and we look forward to the government implementing this law for every indigenous tribe in Taiwan.

Thank you to attorney Thomas Jhan for your assistance and to everyone else who has been concerned about the Smangus Beech Tree Incident. Based on the acquittal in this case, we look forward to justice, peace and freedom being implemented throughout indigenous society.

With this Supreme Court ruling the judiciary has returned innocence to the Smangus people as well as addressed indigenous rights to natural resources. The Supreme Court has also affirmed that the handling of indigenous issues, whether judicial or legislative, should be carefully considered based on the ideal of multiculturalism, instead of applying Han Chinese cultural norms to such situations. By upholding the will of the Supreme Court and ruling in favor of the indigenous defendants, the Taiwan High Court has written a new page in judicial and cultural history.

Finally, we call on the Ma administration to deliver true indigenous political autonomy, and immediately review the Indigenous Autonomy Act.

Everyday I ask the same questions over and over again: why are people doing this? Why are persons with education, money, intelligence, position, power, good intentions and other attributes that we consider "positive" allowing, and often enabling, the quality of our economy, society and non-human natural environment to deteriorate to such a devastating extent?

The answers that I generally come up with, answers that differ from the often heard "human nature", "greed", "Taiwanese" and so on, are that we lack the information and the means to process that information into viable action.

My first answer is that the information about how bad things really are has the potential to start a violent revolution. Few individuals with economic, social or political power want us to know too much about the connections between their wealth, status and power and the increasing misery of people, starvation, war, rich poor gap, climate destabilization and all the environmental conflagration that portends. The reasons are obvious. They have families, reputations and their own perceived needs to protect and maintain.

Despite repeated criticism, on 13 October the contentious environmental impact report of the fourth stage expansion of the Central Taiwan Science Park was finally granted provisional approval. The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) maintains that the environmental impact assessment examination was conducted professionally, and was not granted provisional approval due to pressure from the developer, the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau of the National Science Council. Nevertheless, the 13 October extension meeting of the fifth preliminary examination and the 31 October Environmental Impact Assessment Committee meeting were conducted behind layers of security blocking out locals that would be harmed by the development and opposed environmental organizations, clearly demonstrating that the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee was not free from strong pressure from the administration.

"We could have saved ourselves, but we didn’t. It’s amazing. What state of mind were we in, to face extinction and simply shrug it off?" So says an archivist from the year 2055 in a world ravaged by climate change as portrayed in the recently premiered film The Age of Stupid. On 21 and 22 September The Age of Stupid appeared on over 700 screens in more than 50 countries around the world in yet another urgent appeal to world leaders to take decisive action against climate change.

Wild at Heart along with the British Trade & Cultural Office organized and hosted Taipei’s screening of the film with a turnout of over 500 including representatives sent from Taiwan’s National Security Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, National Forest Service, Central Weather Bureau, and National Research Institute.

A major river basin transfer project is being planned for western Taiwan in order to meet predicted growth in demand for fresh water, including that of the factories of the phase 1-3 Central Taiwan Science Park development. Aside from concerns about the pollution that will be discharged from these factories, a further increase in water exploitation and the infrastructure necessary to support it are expected to impact the rivers’ ecological systems, including endangered wildlife in their estuaries, and pose risks associated with earthquake activity in the vicinity of the project. Statements by conservationists at the 183rd Environmental Impact Assessment review plenary on 26 August highlighted these two issues of major concern.

The Taan River-Tachia River Combined Use Water Transport Project (大安大甲溪水源聯合運用輸水工程計) aims to divert 1.5 million tons of water per day from the Tachia River in Taichung County, ostensibly to meet the predicted public water needs of the greater Taichung area. The water will be diverted northwards into a water treatment plant and an irrigation channel in Houli, Taichung, and across the Tachia River to a second treatment plant at the Liyutan (artificial) Reservoir in Miaoli County, via a series of tunnels and pipes. Construction is expected to take four years.

At the meeting on 26 August, lawyer Thomas Jhan (詹順貴) of the Primordial Law Firm (元貞聯合法律事務所 ) in Taipei, who acted on the EIA committee from 2005 to 2007, referred to the Tsengwen Interbasin Tranfer (IBT) Project in Chiayi County, southern Taiwan, which is believed may have been at least partly responsible for the deadly mudslide that buried Shiaolin Village a month ago, a matter currently under investigation. With one mouth of the tunnel of the Taan/Tachia IBT being situated only two hundred metres upstream of the Shihkang Dam, which breached during the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that occurred on 21 September 1999, and with around ten known geological faults and sheer zones within the project area, Jhan said the Taan-Tachia River project appeared to be even more dangerous than the Tsengwen project.

Meanwhile, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association submitted comments challenging the poor display of understanding and consideration for river ecology by the proponents.

Christina MacFarquhar

In response to protest by residents, farmers and aquaculture farmers in Changhua County against effluent discharge plans from a major high-tech industrial development project planned for Erlin Township in Changhua County, Central Taiwan Science Park developers are now proposing to discharge the effluent into Yunlin County’s Jhuoshuei River instead, provoking an angry response from Yunlin residents, who are equally concerned about the pollution and say that there has been no public explanation of the project.

The fourth phase of the CTSP development is to be located in Erlin Township, Changhua County, nearby and upstream of agriculture and aquaculture farms. The science park’s Erlin Zone will initially include factories belonging to the semiconductor, opto-electronics and precision machinery industries.

The original plan was to discharge waste water from the complex into the Old Jhuoshuei River, which flows northwestwards and meets the sea at Fusing Township, Changhua County. However, Erlin Township and Fusing Township agriculture and aquaculture farmers downstream of the site protested against this, fearful of the impacts on their produce and their health.

Map: the three proposed effluent discharge options

Last Monday (10 August) Changhua residents protested outside the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in Taipei during the fourth review meeting for the development. Protesters gathered behind a scene of rice, hay, grapes and dragon fruit strewn on the ground and held up banners and signs carrying slogans such as “Phase Four of the CTSP means terminal cancer”, “Who wants to eat green, toxic oysters?” and “The people of Erlin don’t want CTSP’s arsenic pollution”.

Photo: Changhua County residents
protest at EPA, 10.8.09.

They warned that much of the food produced in and around Erlin is consumed in places such as Taipei, and that people around Taiwan would soon be eating poisoned food if this project goes ahead. Several said that they would not dare eat their own produce if it were irrigated with contaminated water from the CTSP factories.

Now Yunlin County residents face the same problem after the CTSP developers responded to the protest in Changhua County by suggested discharging pollutants southwards into Yunlin County’s Jhuoshuei River, instead.

“Yunlin County is a major rice producing area in Taiwan,” says Hua-Suei Chen of Yunlin County Environmental Protection Bureau, “and our rice is famous for being irrigated with water from the Jhuoshuei River. Hsilo Township [in Yunlin] is also Taiwan’s biggest vegetable and fruit supplying region, and the Jhuoshuei River feeds many of central Taiwan’s aquaculture ponds.”

Christina MacFarquhar

It sounded great – the “Expert Meeting on the Impacts of Relevant West Coast Development Projects on the Humpback Dolphins and Integrated Impact Reduction Measures”. What more all-encompassing assessment could those concerned about the effects of unrelenting coastal industrial development on Taiwan’s critically endangered humpback dolphin population have asked for? Well, perhaps one that in some way reflected the intention suggested by this superb title. Now two such meetings have been held, and green groups are at a loss for positive words to describe the results.

Photo: Second Sousa Expert Meeting, 31
July, 2009

Shortly before the first “expert meeting” on 1 June the host – Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) - sent participants copies of a report that was to be discussed. Given the several dozen major development projects adjacent to or upstream of the dolphins’ habitat, it seemed somewhat inappropriate that the sole subject of the report was Taiwan Power Company’s (Taipower) Changgong Coal-Fired Power Plant, proposed for construction on the Changhua County coast. Although the expert meeting had indeed originally been proposed during an assessment meeting for the Taipower project, the impacts of one single power plant could hardly represent the diverse forms of pollution, land and water use, freshwater exploitation and underwater noise associated with all the other projects up and down the west coast. And with its all-inclusive title the EPA clearly meant to discuss the enormous collective load of all the projects on the dolphins…didn’t it?

In 2007 nine members of the EPA’s environmental impact assessment commission co-signed a declaration to protest the Executive Yuan and other agencies’ use of media and personal pressure to interfere with the commissioners’ evaluation of several large development projects such as the Central Science Park, Formosa Plastics Group Steel Plant and the Kuokuang Petrochemical Park Project. This was the first time in the 25 year history of the environmental impact assessment process that commissioners had publicly criticized the executive for interference in what is supposed to be an independent and objective process.

Since the Environmental Impact Assessment Act was passed into law in 1994, it has often been misunderstood as an obstacle to development, while the agency in charge of protecting the environment, the EPA, has failed to grasp its own role or the proper role of other agencies under the EIA Act, the Basic Environmental Act and even their Organic Act. This often results in policy taking precedence over regulations and even laws, even to the extent that the EPA fails to exercise its fundamental duties of supervision.

Wild’s founding director, Robin Winkler, served for a two-year term on the EIA commission during which he attended more than 1000 briefings by developers in over 250 new and ongoing development projects. From this involvement he learned that rarely was there a case that didn’t have major problems, many of which could be attributed to the system. For example, the government commissioners could appoint proxies whereas the non-government commissioners could not, leading to what many believe was manipulation of meeting-results by the EPA by scheduling meeting times when commissioners whose views might have differed from those of the government and developers (or “non-conforming commissioners”) were unavailable.

Winkler believes that the use of the term “prevent” in the law is part of the legal basis of what the EPA used to proudly tout as the “veto right” of commissioners. But in reality, he continues, that “right” is an illusion, for the EPA has many ways to ensure that the “veto” will never be effectively exercised.

© Copyright 1998 Daniel Quinn
{Address by Daniel Quinn to the Sixth Annual Rice University Environmental Conference, Houston, Texas, February 14, 1998}

Once upon a time in a certain city it was noticed that pre-adolescent children were beginning to throw themselves off the roofs of tall buildings with alarming frequency. No one wondered for a moment whose business it was to deal with this alarming development. The city council met and quickly drafted some regulations requiring the erection of guard rails on the roofs of tall buildings. Denied this means of suicide, however, children began to throw themselves off of much lower buildings, and soon all buildings of more than three storeys were required either to install guard rails or to block access to roofs. The expense was enormous, but of course what is outgo to one person is income to another, so the economy continued to flourish as before.

Unfortunately, however, the pre-adolescent suicide rate did not decline.

On 2 June, representatives from Wild at Heart, Changhua Environmental Protection Union and Matsu’s Fish Conservation Union met with officials from the Ministry of National Defense to begin discussing ways to reduce the risk of impacts of military activities on Taiwan’s Critically Endangered humpback dolphins and other marine mammals.

Photo: Live-firing exercise just south of Dachia River estuary, 17 June 2009

At the meeting, chaired by Legislator Tien Chiu-chin, the groups emphasized that, while their concerns had been heightened by the direct bombardment of humpback dolphin habitat from the shore near the Dachia River estuary in May and June, the potential impacts of other activities, including military sonar, on marine mammals also need to be addressed as soon as possible.

Mid-frequency sonar has been shown to have caused fatal mass strandings of four species of whale in the Bahamas in 2000, and possibly in other locations including the Canary Islands, Greece and Hawaii. Mass cetacean strandings have also occurred in Taiwan, including incidents in 2004 and 2005 that coincided with large-scale naval exercises in the region.

Wild at Heart proposed that Taiwan’s military design and implement a standard operating procedure (SOP) to protect marine mammals, as exists in various forms in countries such as Italy, France, Australia, the US and the UK.

MND representatives explained ways in which the military could improve protective measures during exercises next year, such as by moving the target several kilometers further from the shore. However, no response was given regarding sonar or other sources of noise and other disturbance.

The conservation groups and the MND agreed to continue discussions.

In response to the letter on 16 June 2009 from Wild at Heart expressing concern over the bombardment by Taiwan’s military of critically endangered humpback dolphin habitat off the coast of central Taiwan the Ministry of National Defense has notified Wild that it has asked a number of departments within the MND, including the command headquarters of the army, navy and airforce to review the materials concerning the welfare of dolphins and the livelihoods of fishers and respond to the Department of Resources MND by 30 June 2009.

Photo: Eastern Taiwan Strait (=western Taiwan) humpback dolphins

In the meantime Wild has arranged to meet with representatives of the MND to discuss the matter of impact mitigation and explore possibilities of introducing best practices and alternatives to these exercises.

Also see:
Taiwan military fires directly into critically endangered humpback dolphin habitat 17 June

Military Exercise at Daan River Mouth 4 June

Kyodo News reported today:

"Taiwan's military fired grenades and mortar shells into a key habitat for endangered dolphins during live-fire exercises Wednesday, an environmental protection group said.

A dwindling population of Chinese white dolphins [humpback dolphins] was at risk from howitzers in the Da-an River Estuary on Taiwan's west coast, a major habitat for the dolphins, the Taipei-based Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association said.

"The military is not showing any regard for the welfare of this critically endangered group of dolphins,'' said Christina Macfarquhar, a researcher at Wild at Heart....

[Other than the fact that the military was firing in that area, equally disturbing was the military’s response to questions from Kyodo...]

"...Asked for comment, military media liaison officer Col. Ben Wang confirmed the exercises, saying shells had been fired into the water.

But he said he was unaware of concerns about the dolphins.

"Taiwan has Chinese white dolphins?" he said.

"This isn't the first time we've conducted these exercises -- these are regular maneuvers," he added.

Macfarquhar said the military had participated in Cabinet-level meetings on protecting the dolphins, "so they should be aware of this issue."

"The fact that they're firing shells right into the habitat shows how much attention they've paid to it," she added.

(Click here for the full article)

*****

Note from Wild:

In fact, the National Council for Sustainable Development (under the Executive branch of the government) has now held two interagency meetings on "Action to Protect Taiwan's Humpback Dolphin Population" (on 29 August 2008 and 26 February 2009) and representatives from the Ministry of National Defense attended both of them and made statements suggesting that military units were being required to reduce the impact of live firing exercises on the dolphins. But judging by today’s display this does not include avoiding firing right into their habitat.

While the rest of the world is concerned with climate destabilization and governments are taking pains to find ways of addressing water resource utilization, we see our Taiwan government engaged in quite a fierce shadow boxing match while at the same time sputtering out all manner of vague and insignificant carbon reduction measures. We have been told to take off our heavy clothes, we have been excoriated to carry our own drinking cups and chopsticks, and we even get a few little subsidies for conserving some electricity, buying more stuff, buying a new car, or cutting down on our personal water consumption.

See the Save the Humpback dolphin blog* for recent images of Taichung coal-fired power plant (the biggest CO₂-emitting power plant in the world), whose effluent flows into humpback dolphin habitat.

Proponents of more coal-fired power plants on the coast adjacent to the dolphins' habitat argue that, because the dolphins still swim in these waters, additional effluent from more coal-fired power plants will not affect them. In fact, the dolphins are restricted to these waters--they have no where else to go, no matter how much we degrade their home.

Photo: Effluent from the world's #1 CO₂
emitting power plant, Taichung. 10.5.09.

* The Save the humpback dolphin blog is run by Matsu's Fish Conservation Union, a coalition of Taiwanese environmental NGOs working to protect Taiwan's humpback dolphins, otherwise known as "Matsu's Fish". The member groups are: Taiwan Academy of Ecology; Taiwan Sustainable Union; Taiwan Environmental Protection Union; Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association; Wild Bird Society of Yunlin and Changhua Coast Conservation Action.

Further to previous posts on this issue, in February this year a number of NGOs and individuals wrote to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) expressing concern over the proposed transect lines and noise impact mitigation measures for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute (L-DEO) marine seismic survey in the waters of southeast Asia, planned to take place from March 21 to July 14, 2009. (See below for links to comments and other documents mentioned here.)

Photo: An ETS humpback dolphin mother-and-calf pair: the original transect lines ran directly through critically endangered humpback dolphin habitat

On March 31, the NMFS granted LDEO an Incidental Harassment Authorization (IHA) for this survey, for which LDEO had provided a Supplemental Environmental Assessment (SEA) on March 27.

Several issues have arisen from this new version of the seismic survey plan. First, the SEA and the IHA do reflect consideration of the concerns expressed during the comment period, and some changes have been made to reduce potential impacts. For those changes that will potentially reduce impacts on marine mammals in the region, credit is due to all who took the time to express their opinions and concerns, and to L-DEO and the NMFS for making those changes.

The changes include rescheduling to reduce impacts on humpback whales wintering and calving in the Babuyan Islands and the re-routing of the transect lines through the Taiwan Strait.

Regarding the latter, transect lines along the west coast of Taiwan are to be moved offshore by ~ 20 km to protect the Critically Endangered population of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (condition 10 (w) in the IHA), and surveying has been limited to waters greater than 150 km from the mainland side of the Taiwan Strait "to reduce potential for effects on Western Pacific gray whales, Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis), and finless porpoises" (condition 10 (u)). Furthermore, seismic operations are limited to waters deeper than 50 m (condition 10 (aa)). These conditions effectively prevent L-DEO from surveying the majority of the Taiwan Strait, most of which is between 120 km and 180 km wide and typically narrower than 170 km throughout the waters adjacent to the ETS humpback dolphin habitat, and some of which is shallower than 50 m at a distance of more than 20 km from the Taiwan coast.

Noting, however, that the second leg of the survey, which includes a transect line through the Taiwan Strait, is still scheduled to go ahead on May 3 according to the new SEA, several Taiwanese and US groups (Wild at Heart, CSI, HSI and NRDC) requested clarification. The response from the NMFS is that, having already issued the IHA and with the first leg of the survey already underway, NMFS is now changing the conditions of the IHA in order to allow L-DEO to carry out the second leg of the survey. Written clarification is expected before the second leg begins, but the suggestion is that the original logic upon which those conditions were based is to be abandoned in order to allow the project to proceed.

"Whether it's inner-city America or a remote Aboriginal village in Taiwan, toxic and other waste often ends up dumped near the poorest, most marginalized communities." See Jonathan Adams' recent report on government bribery tactics.

Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association founder Robin Winkler was recently quoted in a Bloomberg article, "Taiwan Energy Talks Pit Ma Against Nuclear Opponents", regarding the recent debate to end an eight-year ban on new nuclear reactors to supposedly help curb emissions from electricity generation.

"Taiwan’s demographics make nuclear a very dangerous proposition,” said Robin Winkler, a Taipei-based lawyer and former member of Taiwan’s environmental impact assessment commission. "If the issues of safety and waste could be solved, I could consider nuclear as an option, but to date, whether Taiwan or anywhere else, those issues haven’t been resolved."

The entire article can be read here.

One of the projects Wild has recently been involved with extensively is the effort to save a community in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County, from the greed of politicians and developers.

Photo: A Tucheng rice field

The community, which is a 20-minute metro ride and ten minute walk from the Tucheng metro station, is located in a former military base known as the Tucheng Munitions Storage Area (TMSA 土城彈藥庫), which until about four years ago meant that the 20 or so families within the area were basically under martial law, no outsiders were allowed in and the activities of the residents were restricted. (The military land constitutes less than a fifth of a total of 160 hectares.)

The Taipei Detention Facility in Tucheng (台北(土城)看守所) and its superior government agency the Ministry of Justice decided recently that their current facility is overcrowded and had hoped that by proposing to move the facility into the TMSA it could be labeled as a “major development”, which would simplify and accelerate screening procedures for the project.


Photo: Tucheng greens

At the same time, developers were salivating at the prospect of leveling the hills and putting up luxury housing projects and a hospital site for the Tzu Chi religious organization.

Yesterday morning, local conservation groups called upon the Executive Yuan to address the threat of certain types of fishing nets to Taiwan’s humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis), responding to a petition by American conservation groups for the U.S. to ban imports of swordfish caught by Taiwanese gillnet and longline fisheries due to reportedly high levels of cetacean bycatch.

Photo: Matsu (Eagle
Shih 施月英) and her
"fish" (humpback
dolphin)

The U.S.-based Centre for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network claim that much of the swordfish imported by the U.S. is sourced from countries that have failed to demonstrate that their fishing methods do not kill or otherwise harm cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) in numbers exceeding U.S. standards. The groups say that much of this fish is supplied by Taiwanese fisheries via intermediaries in Singapore, and that the information currently available on Taiwan indicates high levels of incidental catch (or “bycatch”) of cetaceans.

The structure of gillnets make them particularly dangerous for cetaceans, which can become entangled in them and drown, while longlines can cause death by drowning, starvation, bleeding or infection when cetaceans become entangled in the lines or on the hooks attached to them, which can number into the thousands.

Photo: "Survivor" - one of Taiwan's
injured humpback dolphins

Photo: Forty security staff prepare
to meet thirteen dolphin conservationists

Yesterday morning, a procession of green groups arrived at their press conference at the gates of the Executive Yuan carrying a life-size model of a dolphin. Among them was Eagle Shih (施月英) of Changhua Coast Conservation Action dressed as Matsu, the Sea Goddess of the Matsu Religion after whom the humpback dolphin gets its local name “Matsu’s fish”. More than forty security guards blockaded the gate as the procession approached, as also happened in January last year when the groups first petitioned the Executive Yuan to take action to save the dolphins.

Some of Taiwan's critically endangered Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins were filmed yesterday in coastal waters near a coal-fired power plant which has been ranked first in the world for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

ETS humpback dolphin habitat (dark grey)

The Eastern Taiwan Strait (ETS, or western Taiwan) humpback dolphins were filmed north of the Taichung Thermal Power Plant on the coast of Taichung County, central Taiwan. This area belongs to the northern half of the dolphins' narrow coastal habitat, which stretches from Tainan County in the south to the Miaoli-Hsinchu County line in the north.

The online database Carbon Monitoring for Action lists the plant number one in the world for CO2 emissions, which total nearly 30 million tons a year.

Also along the coast adjacent to the population's habitat are the Mailiao (Formosa Plastics) Power Plant and the Changgong Power Plant. Mailiao is listed as the fifth largest CO2 emitting coal-fired power plant in the world and Changgong looks set to join the leaders.

National Taiwan University climatologist Hsu Kuang-Jung said at a press conference in late 2008 that "if expansion plans go ahead Changgong will be awarded fourth place".

Among the five major threats to the dolphins, which are now estimated to number less than 100, is the pollution of air and water from the countless factories, farms, cities and power plants along this intensively industrialised coast.

Taipei, Taiwan – February 26, 2009 – Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, a public interest organization dedicated to protecting Taiwan's natural environment, will be participating in a protest held by eight Taiwanese conservation NGOs to decry the lack of government action to address well-publicized threats to Taiwan's critically endangered Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis). The protest will be held on Thursday, February 26, 2009 shortly before a closed-door meeting to be convened by the Biodiversity Division of the National Council of Sustainable Development.

The meeting will be only the second to be held since the government agreed more than a year ago to formulate a humpback dolphin conservation action plan and hold multi-stakeholder discussions to facilitate implementation. With no action plan in sight and no remedial action having resulted from the first meeting, NGOs insist that the government must do better.

Although NGOs have provided many detailed scientific documents describing the state of the population, the coordinates of their habitat and the main threats they face (entanglement in fishing gear; air, water and noise pollution; habitat loss; and reduction of freshwater flow into estuaries) government agencies still cite a lack of data as standing in the way of decisions, while simultaneously failing to invite key local and foreign dolphin experts who could offer the most up-to-date data on the population and help formulate effective solutions.

Cheat Neutral, the film that attempts to make it acceptable to cheat on your partner in the same way carbon offsetting makes it OK to keep polluting the world with excess carbon, is now available with Chinese subtitles. (And just in time for Valentine's Day!)

Recent posts on the Matsu's Fish Conservation Union blog have highlighted concerns over a series of marine seismic surveys using a large airgun array, planned for the waters of SE Asia (including the EEZs of Japan, Taiwan, China and the Philippines) from March 21 to July 14 2009 by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) at Columbia University, as part of the "TAIGER" project. These surveys are believed to have the potential to impact, in some cases quite significantly, on a considerable number of vulnerable, poorly understood or in some cases critically endangered populations of cetaceans in the highly biodiverse yet relatively poorly studied waters of this region.

Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association will deliver its comments, concerns and recommendations* to the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) later today, before the comment deadline of 1700 EST (Thursday 5 February). Wild at Heart and Matsu’s Fish Conservation Union welcome your support in helping prevent unnecessary and potentially disastrous harm to Taiwan’s critically endangered humpback dolphins as well as a range of other marine mammal populations in the waters of Taiwan, China, Japan and the Philippines by signing on to this letter.

If you would like to sign on, please send an email to: seismictaiwan@gmail.com before 1600 EST today (5 Feb) giving your full name and organisation/other affiliations you would like to add, and Wild will add your name to the letter. The letter can be viewed by clicking HERE.

Please see the MFCU blog post on this issue for more details, as well as a version of the letter which you can cut, paste and email to NMFS as an alternative.

The Wild at Heart Legal Association and other animal activists are calling on the U.S. government to reject a proposal by the Columbia University-affiliated Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (L-DEO) to conduct earthquake studies on Taiwan’s sea floor. The full story can be found in the Taipei Times: Group warns quake study could harm rare dolphins

More information on the plight of Taiwan's humpback dolphins can be found on "Save the Taiwan Humpback Dolphin".

Download file

Battery of Robin Winkler by Yunlin County Assembly Speaker Su Jin-huang

Taiwan Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association (台灣蠻野心足生態協會)

TAIPEI (December 30, 2008)--On 7 November 2007, Yunlin County Assembly Speaker Su Jin-huang (蘇金煌) assaulted former Environmental Impact Assessment Committee member Robin Winkler (Wen Lu-bin 文魯彬) at an environmental impact assessment hearing held at the Environmental Protection Agency’s (環保署) Taipei offices. The hearing was held to review the environmental impact of the Formosa Plastics Group’s proposed US$5 billion steel plant in Taisi Township (台西), Yunlin County. In October 2008, Su was convicted of the assault and was sentenced to six months imprisonment convertible to a fine. Both Su and the prosecutor filed appeals with the Taiwan High Court. The High Court today dismissed both appeals and upheld Su’s conviction and sentence by the District Court.

Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard
Together with Taiwan Watch and the Taiwan Green Party we have produced the kanji character subtitles for Annie Leonard's brilliant, succinct and basic lesson on what's been going on in America during the last half century and what we around the world seem so very eager to emulate. The three Taiwan groups will be visiting leading economists in Taiwan to encourage support for a public debate about the advisability of stimulating consumption through consumption coupons and other measures the government has recently promoted. For the original video, please go to their website: http://www.storyofstuff.com/.

Already nearly five-million viewers have watched the 20-minute clip and we at Wild are very pleased to be part of the program's presentation to kanji (the traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan) readers around the world. For more information in kanji on this video as well as a full translation of Annie's well-researched notes, please see Taiwan Watch Institute's site: http://www.taiwanwatch.org.tw/sos/sos-01.htm.

Cheat Neutral
The humor of this one http://www.cheatneutral.com/ seemed to have escaped one Taiwan blogger who said he/she just didn't get it, but appreciated the “hard work and creativity”. That may be more a reflection of the tight cooperation of our businesses with government/academic/parliamentarians than the blogger's education and experience. Franny Armstrong, the producer/director of McLibel, Drowned Out, Baked Alaska and most recently the Age of Stupid, recommended the short film to us a year ago and we contacted the producers and obtained permission to subtitle and put up the clip. A companion article to Cheat Neutral is George Monbiot's Selling Indulgences that appeared in the Guardian 18 October 2006. This will also be published soon in kanji on the Wild site with the permission of the author.

Wake Up, Freak Out, Get a Grip
Wake Up, Freak Out is the third video in this series on consumption and climate change. With help from a number of people on the translation, and permission from the film's producer, Leo Murray, we are also happy to have a hand in bringing to Taiwan this clear, concise explanation of complex feedback systems that are taking us to the tipping point of climate change. This 12-minute animation begins with the challenging statement that it really isn’t about saving polar bears, a slap in the face of those who would prefer we remain distracted by poster children. While the subject is overwhelming once one has “woken up” it delivers the message well that we need to, and can, deal with it. That is if the turds in power who control all the means to do something will let us know what’s going on so we can wake up.

The Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), with its monopoly on power provision and about 60 percent of the nation's energy production, has had some of its antics brought into the open. During Wild Director Robin Winkler's term as commissioner on the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration's Environmental Impact Assessment commission, the first and second phases of a proposed power plant for Taipower were reviewed.

The proposed plant, in addition to being located midway between the world's first and fifth largest emitters of CO₂ would have severely exacerbated the already severely polluted west coast of Taiwan, home to the small and unique critically endangered endemic sub-species of the Indo Pacfic Humpback Dolphin. On the day following the submcommittee's rejection, Robin was approached at the EPA during another Taipower case by a Taipower employee who, in a very serious voice, said, "What are we going to do? We already signed the contracts to purchase the equipment for the plants." Taipower has a reputation for having engaged in illegal and irresponsible practices for years. While the Democratic Progressive Party was in power, some of those shenanigans started to come to light. But now that the old Chinese National Party KMT is back, the sorts of coincidences reported here are likely to become more commonplace.

The world's dirtiest power plant, Taipower's Wuchi Power Plant, through the haze. A critically endangered Taiwan Humpback Dolphin is shown swimming in the bottom left.

Taipower Coal Purchasing Documents Audaciously Stolen on the Eve of Control Yuan Investigation

atnext.com, 12 November 2008

Taiwan's national power company, Taipower, under the leadership of the Ma Ying-jeou Administration, has been alleged to have purchased overpriced fuel coal, causing protracted overpricing of power bills to the country's consumers. Strangely enough, just as Taiwan's national governmental watchdog body, the Control Yuan, was preparing to launch an investigation, the storehouse in which Taipower keeps the files of its external purchasing contracts was burglarized. Even stranger, the only documents stolen in the burglary were the fuel coal purchase agreement documents. The peculiar circumstances of the theft have led to speculation that the burglary was aimed at making evidence disappear.

Note: This letter was also published in the "Taipei Times" on 6 Nov 2008

Thursday, Nov 06, 2008

The undersigned, scholars and writers from the US, Europe and Australia, wish to express their deep concern about the recent series of detentions in Taiwan of present and former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government officials. To date there have been at least seven such cases.

It is obvious that there have been cases of corruption in Taiwan, but these have occurred in both political camps. The political neutrality of the judicial system is an essential element in a democracy. It is also essential that any accused are considered innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.

We also believe that the procedures followed by the prosecutor's offices are severely flawed: while one or two of the accused have been formally charged, the majority is being held incommunicado without being charged. This is a severe contravention of the writ of habeas corpus and a basic violation of due process, justice and the rule of law.

In the meantime, the prosecutor's offices evidently leak detrimental information to the press. This kind of "trial by press" is a violation of the basic standards of judicial procedures. It also gives the distinct impression that the Kuomintang (KMT) authorities are using the judicial system to get even with members of the former DPP government.

In addition, the people who are being held incommunicado are of course unable to defend themselves against the misreporting and the leaks in the news media.

We do firmly believe that any alleged wrongdoings must be dealt with in a fair and open manner in an impartial court. Justice through the rule of law is essential to Taiwan's efforts to consolidate democracy and protect fundamental human rights.

We do not want to see Taiwan's hard-earned democracy jeopardized in this manner. Taiwan can justifiably be proud of its transition to democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It would be sad for Taiwan and detrimental to its international image if the progress which was made during the past 20 years would be erased. Taiwan needs to move forward, not backwards to the unfair and unjust procedures as practiced during the dark days of Martial Law (1947-1987).

Signed:

Julian Baum
Former Far Eastern Economic Review bureau chief

Nat Bellocchi
Former American Institute in Taiwan chairman

Coen Blaauw
Formosan Association for Public Affairs, Washington

David Prager Branner
Director at large (East Asia),
American Oriental Society

Gordon G. Chang
Author of
The Coming Collapse of China

PROF. June Teufel Dreyer
University of Miami

PROF. Edward Friedman
University of Wisconsin

PROF. Bruce Jacobs
Monash University

Richard C. Kagan
Professor emeritus,
Hamline University

Jerome Keating
Author and former associate professor, National Taipei University

ASSOC. PROF. Daniel Lynch
School of International Relations, University of Southern California

PROF. Victor H. Mair
University of Pennsylvania

ASSOC. PROF. Donald Rodgers
Austin College

PROF. Terence Russell
University of Manitoba

PROF. Scott Simon
University of Ottawa

John J. Tkacik Jr
Senior research fellow,
The Heritage Foundation

Gerrit van der Wees
Editor, Taiwan Communique

PROF. Arthur Waldron
University of Pennsylvania

PROF. Vincent Wei-cheng Wang
University of Richmond

Stephen Yates
President of DC Asia Advisory and former deputy assistant to the vice president for national security affairs

At 4 p.m. on 9 October 2008, the Taipei District Court announced its decision in the case of Robin Winkler (文魯彬, Wun Lu-bin) vs Su Chin-huang (蘇金煌). This arose from Su's battery of Winkler in the kitchen of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) of Taiwan's Executive Yuan (Cabinet) on 7 November 2007. Su was found guilty of battery and was sentenced to six months imprisonment, which can be converted to a fine at NT$1000 per day.

"There are no dolphins there [at Mailiao]"
(Photo taken at Mailiao by Shichu Yang)

What happened and why?

Background
Su, head of the Yunlin County Assembly, and Winkler, former commissioner on the EPA's Environmental Impact Assessment Commission (August 2005-July 2007) and a naturalized Taiwan citizen, were attending a screening committee meeting on the proposed NT$137 billion (approximately US$4 billion) investment by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) in a steel plant to be located near Su's hometown. Formosa Plastics Group already has major investments in Yunlin County (雲林縣) and is well known for its infiltration of most of the county's public agencies. Yunlin, also known as one of Taiwan's economically poorest counties, was, until quite recently, one of the most pristine areas on the island with a very rich cultural, fishing and agricultural heritage.

The massive influx of petrochemical plants and related industries that began in the late 80s and continued with a fury throughout the following decades has left the county rife with cancer and other illnesses, acute problems with air, water and soil pollution, and a severely stressed social structure, with one of the highest crime rates in the country.

Sunset at Mailiao

Premier Liu calls for shoppers to boost economy (Taipei Times
19.10.08 p. 3)

Premier Liu, in the midst of Taiwan's teetering on the brink of economic, social and environmental bankruptcy, stole his cue from George W's comment after 9/11 encouraging Americans not to grieve or reflect, but to consume ("Get down to Disney World in Florida," he urged just over two weeks after 9/11. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.") Wow, what leadership. We never had it so good.

Editorial: Wang Yung-ching: to the very end (Taipei Times 19.10.08 p. 8)

Joining in the incessant blather taking place in Taiwan's media over the death of "one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Taiwan" is an editorial in the Taipei Times talking about the man who is responsible for greater environmental destruction and social disruption, not to mention economic and political corruption, than anyone else in the history of Taiwan. Although I may be seen as inviting his thugs to beat me up again, I say, "How do we love thee Formosa? Let us count the ways!".

Labor regulations should be relaxed for Air City: MOTC (Taipei Times 19.10.08 p. 3)

In the most densely populated country in the world (Bangladesh is not two-third's mountains) we can't seem to shake our love of crowding more and more people into our stressed island. First it was the foreign bride trade, much of it illegal and a cover for slavery, but controlled by well-connected business people, then foreign labor so that we now have nearly 600,000 victims of commodified international marriages or working for employers that are so incompetent that they can not figure out a way to give Taiwanese decent wages and have to depend on government welfare. In the same proposal by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (the ministry with the highest budget and not coincidentally the highest rate of corruption), the quota for hiring Indigenous peoples is proposed to be lowered from 5 percent to 1 percent.

Download file

How eerie, with so many species around the world at severe risk of extinction and ecosystems at risk of collapse, and at a time when we need leaders who will acknowledge and address the crisis and its implications for all of us, that two governments should be proudly presenting animals from shrunken or endangered populations to each other as if they were offering the last chocolates in their respective chocolate boxes.

(See Taiwan offers deer, goat in exchange for China pandas, Reuters, 8 Oct 2008)

In a profile in today's Taipei Times, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association director Robin Winkler shares some of his ideas on protecting the environment and "reverse engineering".

The compost toilet

High-rise gardening

See
"Being the change we want to see in the world", Taipei Times, August 19, 2008, p.4.

Taiwanese environmental groups held their second Pudu (普渡) ceremony yesterday (the 14th day of the Seventh Month of the Lunar Calendar, or 14 August) in front of the Executive and Control branches of the government.

We are currently in the middle of ghost month, when the gates of hell are opened and all manner of other worldly creatures roam the realms of humans.

Near Taichung Port on 5.8.08

Shortly after the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed Taiwan's Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) as "Critically Endangered" on Wednesday this week (12 August), the Eastern Taiwan Strait Sousa Technical Advisory Group (ETSSTAWG), established in January this year, responded with a press release. In the press release, the Chair of the ETSSTAWG, Dr Peter S. Ross, said “Time is running out for the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin in Taiwan. We hope that recent advances in our understanding of the habitat needs of this charismatic creature will identify a path forward that allows it to recover and thrive.”

A copy of the full press release is posted on the Matsu's Fish Conservation Union (MFCU) blog.

Note: The following is the press release/petition delivered by Matsu's Fish Conservation Union, Green Party Taiwan, the Congressional Office of Legislator Tian Chiu-chin and Taiwan Friends of the Global Greens on 13 August 2008 during a press conference held in front of the Council of Agriculture in response to the listing of Taiwan's humpback dolphins as "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN in its 2008 update of the Cetacean Red List.

Photo: A make-shift President Ma
presents the Critically Endangered
award to a humpback dolphin

(Matsu's Fish Conservation Union, established in January 2007, is a coalition of the following Taiwanese conservation groups: Taiwan Academy of Ecology, Taiwan Sustainable Union, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, Wild Bird Society of Yunlin, Changhua Coast Conservation Action and FormosaCetus Research and Conservation Group.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * PRESS RELEASE * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Due to being isolated from other populations of the same species, Taiwan’s "Matsu's Fish" (Sousa chinensis), also known as the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin or Chinese white dolphin, has evolved in a way that distinguishes it from other populations. It is now recognized by the international cetacean science community that Taiwan’s Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins constitute a unique population.

by Kurtis Pei 裴家騏

Note: Wild and other local NGOs protested against importing panda "gifts" from China in 2005-6 (see our joint press release with Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan, Humanistic Education Foundation, The Homemaker's Union and Foundation, and Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan, and articles Panda Preservation in Taiwan and Pandas for You and Me). We recommend this recent article on the latest panda import plans, by Kurtis Pei (裴家騏), a professor at National Pingtung University’s Institute of Wildlife Preservation. (Translation by Angela Hong). This piece originally featured in the Taipei Times as a letter to the editor on June 3, 2008 (page 8).

Aside from economic topics, the meeting between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) reconfirmed plans for the "gift" of two giant pandas to Taiwan. In response to questions during a legislative interpellation session, Minister of Agriculture Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) said that, in principle, the sooner the pandas arrive, the better.

But China’s gifts of giant pandas have almost always been related to political purposes — and Beijing has made little effort to disguise that fact. Taiwan has no zoo or research group that has made any contribution to the conservation of giant pandas. We are, in a sense, not fully deserving of these creatures. We could very possibly waste the breeding potential of the two pandas, for although Sichuan breeders have had impressive success in breeding, other facilities around the world have been very unsuccessful. Giant pandas are also very costly and would likely affect the budget for indigenous wildlife conservation.

For the past three years one of Wild's big issues has been the conservation of the highly endangered humpback dolphins (or "Matsu's Fish") in the near-shore waters of western Taiwan. Our work and that of the Matsu’s Fish Conservation Union (MFCU -- a group of seven major Taiwanese NGOs, including Wild) was sparked off and is supported greatly by the prolific reporting of Dr. John Wang and Sichu Yang of FormosaCetus Research and Conservation Group, the small research team which has worked hard since 2002 to survey this distinct Taiwanese population and gather vital information about their numbers, basic biology and state of health. Their photographs have allowed us to see the dolphins up-close, including the wounds that around 30 percent of the population bear, believed to be a result of interactions with fishing vessels and nets. Photographs, news and scientific reports can be accessed at the MFCU website.

Now you can also watch the Taiwanese humpback dolphin population in these two videos, filmed and provided by FormosaCetus. Clearly visible in the background is Formosa Plastics Mailiao Industrial Park in Yunlin County -- where proponents of further development have denied the presence of these dolphins. Thanks to the work of FormosaCetus, including this kind of footage, we are able to disprove such claims and give this population a better hope of survival.

Wild is now fundraising to support this year's humpback dolphin survey, which is to be part of a long-term plan to monitor the population size. The information gained from this survey will advise urgently needed conservation action and allow us, the authorities and other stakeholders to assess and improve on any action that is taken to protect the population from extinction. To support the FormosaCetus 2008 research project please contact Chris at +886 (0)2 2382 5789 or chrisgagele@gmail.com.

By C.M.

The official Public Hearing on the Hushan Reservoir Ecological Conservation Measures will be held at 9 a.m. this Saturday (April 26) in Douliu Town Hall (38 FuwenRoad 府文路, Douliu City, Yunlin County, map in Chinese). This follows a preparatory hearing held last month where stakeholders met for a test run and to thrash out details such as the main focus of the discussion and the level of transparency and detail that was expected of the reservoir developer (the Central Region Water Resources Office (CRWRO)¹) and Taiwan Endemic Species Research Insitute (TESRI ), the body commissioned to oversee and co-implement the Conservation Measures.

The official purpose of the meeting is to explain the current status of the Hushan Reservoir Ecological Conservation Measures, the design and implementation of which were one of the conditions upon which the project was approved. Environmental groups, experts, academics and local community representatives are free to attend, or "participate" as the public notice calls it, although public explanation meetings and hearings for EIAs in Taiwan usually allow only a very passive form of participation by the public, something better described as consultation of the public and the provision of an opportunity to comment, but not to directly influence decision-making.

The following translation is an account of an interview with Robin Winkler, a naturalized Taiwanese citizen and former EPA commissioner, founder of Taiwan's Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, and currently member of the board of supervisors of the Green Party Taiwan. The Chinese original appeared in the March 18th edition of the Liberty Times. [Explanatory notes in square brackets].

Lawyer (Attorney of Foreign Legal Affairs) Robin J. Winkler said yesterday that based on the U.S. State Department's Foreign Affairs Manual, travel to the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa does not necessarily mean that one has abandoned lawful permanent residence status. Winkler, a naturalized Taiwanese citizen, said that he did not want to see a president elected who could run off to the U.S. at any time. He argued that to show respect to voters, [now president elect] Ma Ying-jiu has a duty as a candidate to produce evidence that he has abandoned his lawful permanent residence status and should not play semantic games.

By C.M.

Chairs Wu Hung, Yang and Dai (from
right to left).

At a preparatory hearing held on Monday 24th March in Wufeng Township, Taichung County, it was decided that the official public hearing concerning conservation measures to accompany the Hushan Reservoir project in Yunlin County, originally scheduled for the following Monday (31st March), would be postponed. Yesterday the Water Resources Agency (WRA) announced that the meeting will now be held on Saturday 26 April.

The purpose of the official hearing is, according to the WRA, to allow explanation of the current state of the Hushan Reservoir Ecological Conservation Measures, the design and implementation of which were one of the conditions upon which the project was approved.

The decision to postpone the meeting was made when it became clear during the preparatory hearing that the developer (the Central Region Water Resources Office (CRWRO)¹) would, within the remaining time, be unable to pull together the answers to many of the questions to be posed at the official hearing by those concerned about the project’s negative environmental and social impacts.

By CM

You-cing Valley, March 3, 2008
It may well be true that nothing lasts forever. But the rate at which we are accelerating the impermanence of everything natural around us is breathtaking. In Huben, Yunlin County, a forest teeming with plants, insects, birds, reptiles, mammals and others, an entity that creaks and rustles, sings, swoops, sways and sighs with a life of its own, is already in the initial stages of being flattened, stripped and scraped bare of all its wealth, right down into its soil. The diggers are clawing at the outer edges, chainsaws are slicing through the trees, and already one hillside is bare.

Stripped hillside, March 3, 2008 The developers say that now that the Hushan Reservoir construction has commenced the aim is to chop down an entire forest and flood an entire valley in a way which causes the least possible negative impact on the environment.

The Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, a public interest organization created to protect Taiwan's fragile environment, was recently recognized as a nonprofit member of 1% For The Planet.

1% for the Planet (1% FTP) was founded in 2001 by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and Craig Mathews, owner of Blue Ribbon Flies. The two successful business owners are also avid outdoorsmen who have a long history of working to protect the natural resources that kept them in business. 1% FTP was developed as a concept to encourage other businesses to donate at least one percent of their sales to a network of more than 1,500 nonprofit environmental organizations worldwide. To date, 1% FTP has 767 business members and the numbers are still growing. The companies range from a wide variety of industries, including clothing, financial, and travel.

With the additional support and recognition by 1% FTP, Wild at Heart hopes to continue and strengthen its efforts in the protection, conservation and restoration of Taiwan's environment. Our many current initiatives include defending the endangered population of Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins off Taiwan's west coast and fighting for the termination of the Hushan Dam project.

By Christina MacFarquhar

Local farmers protest in front of the EPA
in 2006.

The official announcement was made yesterday that the phase-one Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for Taiwan’s Central Science Park development on Ci-sing Farm, Houli, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in 2006 under circumstances which caused outrage among EIA Review Committee members, has been cancelled by the Administrative Court. This is the result of a lawsuit brought by six farmers from in and around Houli Township, Taichung County, who are represented by a group of lawyers including Lawyer Lin San-Chia and Lawyer of Record Chen Bo-jhou of Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association.

Houli farm produce.

The complainants had accused the EPA of violating the EIA Act in the method by which it had approved the development of an LCD and semi-conductor factory on Ci-sing Farm, Houli at the Plenary on 30 June 2006, saying that the project should have been subject to a phase-two EIA, a further assessment required of projects deemed likely to have a significant impact on the environment. In addition, it was claimed that there had been twenty violations in the Environmental Impact Statement for the project, including insubstantial or false assessments of impacts on irrigation water supply and levels of heavy metal contamination, and a failure to consider human health and pollution of groundwater and crops.

By Christina MacFarquhar

Environmental groups protest violence
against Robin Winkler (centre) in front of
Taipei District Prosecutors Office.

On Friday 25th January, environmental groups rallied in front of the Taipei District Prosecutors Office to express support for Robin Winkler, Director of Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, who was physically assaulted by Yunlin County speaker Su Chin-huang at a meeting at the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) offices in Taipei on 7 November 2007. The meeting concerned the proposed Formosa Plastics Steel Mill in Yunlin County, which is believed would have harmful impacts on the struggling population of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in the west coast waters of Taiwan.

The Council of Agriculture's plan to promote a tree-planting campaign is being met with suspicion.

From Save the Taiwan Humpback Dolphins:

Also reported in the Taipei Times today was the Council of Agriculture saying yesterday that it would promote a tree-planting campaign to help increase the ratio of green land. Again, a good thing. However, I can't help but be a little suspicious of some of these tree-planting efforts. One example that springs to mind is the current reclaiming effort being waged against valuable sea habitat in the name of tree-planting. Yes, in Mailiao, Yunlin County, just next to the Formosa plant they are reclaiming land and in the process destroying valuable Taiwan humpback dolphin habitat to plant trees so that the area is "greener."

This is not the first time we have heard about little trees (often non-native) being used to spruce up the island at the cost of grander, older trees with actual stories to tell, being hauled away.

A recent op-ed piece in the local press highlights the legalized corruption that we call "representative democracy" in Taiwan. To follow up on the author's suggestion of exposing the legislators who supported the drastic reduction of water pollution fines, where is that database of legislator-business ties?

Taiwan's being named by Nature magazine as producing the largest amount of CO₂ emissions of any power plant prompted a member of the environmental impact assessment commission that is reviewing a private power plant project in eastern Taiwan to write an article that appeared in the local press. Our heart goes out to those few commissioners of conscience who try and raise the real issues while participating in the window dressing exercises of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Agency/Developer/Elected Representative clique. We have created an incredible nearly unstoppable pollution generation monster through a simple, three-step process:

1) Privatize energy generation, but keep distribution with the state-owned Taiwan Power Company

2) Taiwan Power is legally required to buy all energy generated, regardless of need

3) Keep the people in the dark as to where the money and energy are going and as to the true costs

Sixty years of isolation under the Chinese KMT rule and for the last eight years under the Taiwanese DPP rule, are taking their toll.

Lee Ken-cheng

In March of this year, a subcommittee of the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee decided that the Formosa Plastics Group's (FPG) US$4 billion steel mill project in Yunlin County should undergo a second-stage Environmental Impact Assessment. This decision was never ratified by a plenary session of the Committee due to concerted pressure from FPG, the Presidential Office, and the Executive Yuan.

Soon after, the Environmental Protection Agency's minister Chang Kuo-lung was forced to resign, and none of the Committee's members whom FPG had demanded recuse themselves from reviewing the project were reappointed to the Committee when their term expired in July. Seven months of delay later, a newly appointed Committee has overturned the March decision and sent the project back to subcommittee for a new review, thereby giving FPG another chance to avoid a second-stage assessment. The subcommittee meets today (2007-11-7). I ask that the subcommittee address the issues I set out here and give the public a full accounting.

1. Phase 4 of FPG's No. 6 Naphtha Cracker Project produces 67.557 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually, accounting for 26.57 percent of Taiwan's total carbon emissions. FPG's Yunlin steel mill project will produce another 14.896 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually or 5.86 percent of Taiwan's total. Together, these two projects will account for 32.43 percent of Taiwan's total carbon emissions. In other words, once Taiwan has to reduce carbon emissions, FPG's total carbon output would not be set off even if every man, woman, and child in Taiwan stopped all residential, commercial, and transportation activities. When that day comes, who is going to have to reduce? Who is going to pay the price of reduction?

2. The Sixth Naptha Cracker uses cheap water diverted from agricultural uses. By selling water to FPG for profit, the Taiwan Joint Irrigation Association forces farmers to pump ground water. This pumping in turn causes central Taiwan's serious land subsidence issue to worsen. The land subsidence problem will continue even if we build the Hushan Reservoir in response to the expanding need for industrial-use water. FPG however eschews any responsibility for the land subsidence it is indirectly causing by its water use.
   
3. The Sixth Naptha Cracker has sharply increased air pollution in Yunlin and Chiayi counties. Elementary school students near the Sixth Naptha Cracker breathe foul air. In some In extreme cases, students wear protective face masks to class. But to pave the way for FPG and Kuokuang Petrochemicals to build their new facilities there, the Industrial Development Bureau is asking the EPA to abandon the its total air pollution capacity controls. In particular, the Bureau is asking the EPA to raise its cap for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) by 58 percent. Should we really be allowing government agencies in charge of economic development to be determining the air pollution standards that impact our health?
   
4. FPG claims that is committed to trustworthiness and feedback to the local community. Before it built the Sixth Naptha Cracker, FPG made promises to the people of Yunlin County. It would build a new Mailiao Township, a Yunlin branch of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (established by the founders of FPG in memory of their father), and a local nursing college. The commissioner of Yunlin County at the time claimed that the project would bring between 120,000 and 200,000 jobs to Yunlin. Not one of those promises have been kept. Over the last dozen years, Yunlin County's population has decreased by nearly 17,000 people. The dream of prosperity created by the Sixth Naptha Cracker was an illusion. In its place, Yunlin, already one of Taiwan's poorest counties, received a polluted environment. Why should we trust FPG again?
   

The FPG steel mill project threatens nearly two-thirds of Taiwan's clam hatcheries, the important aquaculture business, and Taiwan’s Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins. This is part of the price we will pay.

Taiwan's petrochemical, steel, concrete, and paper industries have consumed more than 30% of Taiwan's energy production in recent years. Yet these industries have accounted for less that five percent of Taiwan's real GDP during the same period. In 2005, they accounted for just 2.49 percent of GDP. Taiwan is the world's biggest producer of steel per square kilometer. Can Taiwan, a tiny island nation that is virtually 100 percent dependent on imported energy, afford to continue developing this extravagantly polluting industry with its profligate energy requirements given the heavy environmental burden it already bears? Should we let FPG, which produces one third of Taiwan's carbon emissions, go on lining its pockets, destroying the environment, and preying on the weakest among us?

If a development project of the FPG steel mill's magnitude and impact does not merit a second-phase Environmental Impact Assessment, we should scrap Taiwan's environmental assessment process. I expect the newly-appointed Environmental Impact Assessment Committee members to do their duty and protect Taiwan's environment.

WAH note: At a chaotic 7 Nov. meeting the subcommittee again recommended that the project undergo a second-stage assessment. During the meeting, Yunlin County Council Speaker Su Jinhuang assaulted WAH Executive Director Robin Winkler. The assault is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Lee Ken-cheng was a teacher in Kaohsiung for 17 years. He is the Executive Director of Mercy on the Earth Taiwan and a former appointee to the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee. An earlier version of this comment was published in Chinese by the China Times.

According to a report buried on page 20 of the September 29 edition of the Apple Daily, a subcommittee was formed to review Formosa Plastic's application to increase its water allowance from 251,000 tonnes/day to 351,000 tonnes/day. The report continued that the head of the Overall Planning Department, Huang Guanghui, said that the decision of the subcommittee would have to be approved by the plenary commission, which at the soonest will be in mid October. The report appears to have been accurate except that the original approved amount was 257,000 tonnes/day.

Interestingly, this case involves a number of issues that were headline news earlier this year, including the public's right to information about violations by developers of environmental laws or commitments made pursuant to the approval of their environmental impact assessments, whether there is a legal basis for the application by Formosa for a change in the water usage--the original commitment was backed by a pledge from chairman of Formosa Plastics who said they would shut down operations to the extent necessary to meet their commitment to keep water use down, and how on the day after Formosa Plastics chairman's visit to President Chen, the Executive Yuan canceled an NT$7 million dollar fine against the company for violations of its EIA. Just how long are corporations going to be allowed to keep reporting incredible profits each time financial reports are due at the expense of the well being of the environment and ultimately all who live in Taiwan and generations to come?

Well, it isn't surprising, when it is a choice between Wang Yong-cing and Formosa Plastics' need for cheap water and the marine life along the Yunlin coast: Taiwan's government continues to send the message that it wants our country to stay ahead of the competition for the worst environmental record among developed countries in the world, and while we're at it, let's see how quickly we can't get rid of pesky dolphins and Fairy Pittas before there is too much notice taken by the international community.

For those of us following the Narmada valley tragedy as documented in Franny Armstrong's film Drowned Out (available with Chinese language subtitles from Wild), here is a recent update from Franny:

Good news for once: the anti-dam protesters who were beaten up and
jailed for peacefully protesting in July have won their case against
the Madhya Pradesh state government, who now have to pay
compensation.

A video of the arrest helped them win their case.

Formosa's reclamation site in Mailiao (photo by M. Wilkie)

Save the Taiwan Humpback Dolphins has the following post on the Formosa Steel Plant, a project that has been proposed by Formosa Plastics:

The seventh term of the Environmental Protection Administration's (EPA) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Commission met today to discuss, in a "pre-meeting meeting", the proposed Formosa Steel Plant, which the developer, Formosa Plastics, would like to see built next to its existing petrochemical industrial complex that lies along side the Jhuoshui River estuary between Yunlin County and Changhua County in central Taiwan.

An official from Taiwan's EPA began by summarizing its version of the procedural history of the case. The first committee meeting on the case took place in March 2006. One year later, during the fourth meeting of the review committee, on 19 March 2007, the committee recommended that the development go into a second phase assessment. However, that recommendation never made it to the plenary commission. According to the EPA, the developer requested an opportunity to "submit additional materials". Breaking with its normal procedure (although not unprecedented) of referring the review committee's decision to the plenary commission, the EPA staff granted the request with a deadline of 31 May 2007.

Wild at Heart is pleased to present the Chinese-language subtitled version of the documentary The Corporation to Taiwan. This film exposes an institution that is responsible for most of the social and environmental problems of our time. We are also working with local producers and directors to try to encourage the production of a Taiwan version.

The Corporation is available on DVD, in English with English and Chinese subtitles, from Wild at Heart for those of you who need the Chinese subtitled version. For other language versions please visit the corporation.com website. The DVD is Region All/NTSC and is available upon receipt of a minimum NTD 395 donation via the Wild at Heart Web site. The Corporation can be picked up in person at our office for a minimum donation of NTD 350. In either case, please send us an email with your name, address and how to contact you to comment@wildatheart.org.tw.

Formosan Blue Magpie; photo by Mark Wilkie

Newspapers are reporting that more Formosan Blue Magpie (Urocissa caerulea) chicks have been stolen in Taipei. Formosan Blue Magpies are listed as "Near Threatened" on the IUCN Red Data List and regulated under CITES Appendix II. These birds can fetch up to NTD 80,000 (USD 2,500) on the black market. The Formosan Blue Magpie is protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, and selling them can result in a fine of up to NTD 300,000 (USD 9,375). Wild at Heart had recently reported that six young magpies were stolen near an elementary school in the Taipei suburb of Mucha.

Formosan Sika Stag, Kenting National Park

Article and Photos by Mark Wilkie

There are 13 subspecies of Sika deer Cervus Nippon. One of these subspecies, race taiouanus, is endemic to Taiwan and is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as Critically Endangered. Sika deer are a medium-sized deer native to much of East Asia. In Taiwan, the adult stag averages about 155cm in body length while the hind is a little smaller at around 147cm. A stag's shoulder height averages around 98cm and a hind's around 81cm. The average body weight of a stag is around 68kg while the hind is a lighter 43kg (Wang.Y. & Chan.S.C, Formosan Sika Deer in Kenting National Park, 1998).

Formosan Sika Hind, Kenting National Park

The Formosan Sika deer traditionally inhabited much of Taiwan's lowland plains and hilly areas under 300m. Being a lowland species it has faced ongoing destruction of its habitat from human expansion across the Western coastal plain starting in about 1624 with the onset of the Dutch colonial period. The species has also had to endure extreme hunting pressure. Much of Taiwan's economy was based on the deer hide trade during the Qing period and totals peaking at around a 100,000 hides were exported annually to countries like Japan through ports like Lukang in present day Changhua County, which translates as "Deer Harbour".

A pair of Tree Sparrows, Taichung County; photo by C. Lucarda

A common site in rural Taiwan is netting surrounding orchards to protect fruit trees from birds. The growers' desire to protect their crop from birds is understandable. Many growers erect heavy netting structures around their orchards or fields in an effort to minimize their losses to birds and some larger insects. Some of this netting has a shade value, too, and is easily visible to birds. However, all too often, one sees cheap light plastic netting very similar to the mist netting used by ornithology researches to catch birds for banding purposes being used. This light loose net appears almost invisible to birds and serves to kill rather then deter birds trying to get at the fruit. Birds unknowingly fly into it and their feet get tangled. The bird then dies an agonizingly slow and painful death of dehydration under the hot Taiwan sun.

Nearly invisible light netting, Huben; photo by M. Wilkie

Where does the right of the grower to protect a crop become the right to kill indiscriminately? Where does the grower move from protecting to trapping? Where does the understandable protection of a crop become a license to knowingly kill wildlife? Surely, the erection of nearly invisible netting with the capacity to trap many birds is not a responsible method to "protect" a crop! Regardless of the rights of growers and farmers versus the protection of wildlife and what the various acts do and do not allow, it would appear that for now, thousands and thousands of Taiwan birds will continue to die agonizingly slow deaths under the hot sun as growers "protect" their crops.

Stop Hushan Dam! features a new Fairy Pitta gallery.

Fairy Pitta photo courtesy of Richard Yu.

Stop Hushan Dam! has a feature on the monitoring of Fairy Pitta nests and the movements of fledglings.

Striped Blue Crow (Euploea mulciber barsine)

Late March through to late April can be a really magical time of the year for nature lovers visiting the Huben-Hushan area. From late March through to about the tenth of April great numbers of Purple Crow (Euploea) Butterflies pass through the Huben area on their spectacular journey from southern Taiwan to northern Taiwan. This butterfly migration is amongst the world's most spectacular butterfly migrations. Indeed, Taiwan is often referred to as the Island of Butterflies. With around four hundred butterfly species found on Taiwan, Taiwan is a paradise for butterfly watchers.

SAVE International at Hushan Campaign Office-Meilin Village near the Hushan Dam site.

On the evening of 12 June 2007 members of SAVE International met up with representatives of a number of Taiwan NGOs near the Hushan Dam site. SAVE International is an Earth Island Institute project and was founded in 1997 as a volunteer group of professors, students, and staff from the University of California, Berkeley and National Taiwan University with the mission of saving the endangered Black-faced Spoonbill Platalea minor from extinction.

Fairy Pitta (Pitta nympha)

by Daniel P. Chamberlin

Last Thursday evening May 31st, six young Formosan Blue Magpies (Urocissa caerulea), the recently designated "national bird", were taken from their nest across the street from Wan-Xing Elementary School on Section 2 of Hsiu-Ming Road near National Political University in the Taipei suburb of Mucha.

Taiwan Blue Magpie; Photo by Mark Wilkie

In May, the Blue Magpie was chosen as Taiwan's National Bird by a nationwide poll, far outpacing the other species as a beloved symbol of this nation. As a protected species listed under the Wildlife Protection Act, it is illegal to disturb a nest, possess, raise, buy, or sell the birds. When contacted on Thursday, the Conservation Division of the jian-she-ju of Taipei City government, the agency responsible for enforcing the Wildlife Protection Act within the city limits, promised to investigate. They actively investigate and prosecute violators of the Wildlife Protection Act.

Robin Winkler, in his role as director of the Taiwan Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, joined an alliance of several environmental NGOs in filing a demand letter to Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) today, to be followed by a lawsuit if the EPA fails to take appropriate action within the 60-day time limit stipulated by law.

The groups allege that the EPA, through its negligence and possibly with outright intent, has failed to adequately protect Taiwan’s environment, threatening the health, safety and viability of people throughout the island, future generations, and the well being of other species and their habitat.

by Mark B.Wilkie

Huben; Photo by Mark Wilkie

Important Bird Areas in Asia

More than one quarter of the world's bird species are found in Asia. That means that Asia supports over 2,700 bird species. Three hundred and thirty-two of those species are threatened with global extinction. The greatest threat faced by birds is the loss of habitat and as Asia develops suitable habitat is disappearing at an alarming rate.

Birdlife International is the largest global network of non-governmental conservation organizations with a special focus on birds (Birdlife, 2004, p 1). Birdlife International (formerly known as the International Council for Bird Preservation, or ICBP) started to develop the IBA or Important Bird Area program in the mid-1980s. Basically the program identifies a network of globally important areas for the conservation of birds and their habitats using standard, internationally-agreed criteria.

By Mark B. Wilkie
Douliou, Yunlin County, Taiwan
SR Moderator, Birdforum.
www.birdforum.net

At the southern tip of Taiwan lies the Heng-chun Peninsula. The Heng-chun Peninsula is the most important site for raptor migration in East Asia and is included in the 20 largest raptor migration sites globally. The Heng-chun Peninsula is the Veracruz of East Asia. Twenty-six species of diurnal raptors have been recorded to date with figures as high as 50,000+ birds passing through the peninsula in a day during the peak autumn migration period.

Grey Faced Buzzard; Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

From early to mid October thousands of Grey-faced Buzzards Butastur indicus pass through Heng-chun, Kenting National Park in one of the earth's most spectacular displays of avian migration. The following is a brief history of the plight and conservation of the Grey-faced Buzzard Butastur indicus in Taiwan.

The distribution of the Grey-faced Buzzard Butastur indicus is the Eastern Palearctic region with the species wintering in the Indomalayan region. Through its range the species is uncommon and declining but locally abundant on passage. The Grey-faced Buzzard forms a superspecies with Grasshopper Buzzard-hawk Butastur rufipennis (Afrotropical), Rufous-winged Buzzard-hawk Butastur liventer (Indomalayan) and White-eyed Buzzard-hawk Butastur teesa (Indomalayan).

The "Mother Sea-Goddess (Matsu) Fish" or the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinesis) is grey when born and develops grey-blue freckles during youth. It turns white or pink when fully mature, thus it's other popular name in Chinese meaning "pink dolphin." Local people from fishing villages have named the animal after Matsu, the Sea Goddess, perhaps as result of seeing the Sousa most often around Matsu's birthday in March/April when the seas return to a calmer state. The animals can be found in the temperate and tropical waters off the Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean. Their preferred habitats are transition areas close to shore, particularly estuarine waters.

After several years of observation and research, the FormosaCetus Research & Conservation Group have found that the animals living along Taiwan's west coast differ considerably from their counterparts elsewhere and are likely a distinct subspecies. This would raise their level of importance at least to that of the Formosan landlocked salmon (Oncorhynchus masou formosanus), which appears on Taiwan's currency, and on the conservation of which the government has lavished much money and attention. Officials are not doing nearly enough for the animal given the fact that a very optimistic estimate of the number of these dolphins is no more than 200, with the actual number being most likely about half that number. There is a high likelihood that Taiwan's entire population will become extinct within the next few years threats to their survival are not greatly and immediately reduced.

By Christina MacFarquhar

Update: Click here for information regarding a recent Reuters article on Sousa chinesis in Taiwan.

John Y. Wang / FormosaCetus Research and Conservation Group.

In 2002, Sousa chinesis won official recognition as a resident of Taiwan, leaping out of relative obscurity and into the highest category of endangered species. Despite its proximity to the heaving west coast human population, its presence had gone unnoticed by most local people, and the stretch of coastal waters in which it swims, between the Mailiao and Changpin Industrial Parks, had never before been thoroughly surveyed for cetaceans.

Taipower coal-fired power plant at the mouth of the Dadu River (25.6.06).

The home of the Sousa has changed immensely in recent decades from that in which its ancestors thrived: from the coal-fired power station at the mouth of the Dadu River, an army of pylons marches out across the plain and charges up the hill to fuel the campaign to keep Taiwan lit up, cooled down and churning out the goods; smoke stacks punctuate the flat landscape at Mailiao, nurturing the yellowish haze that floats lazily northward on the light breeze; human and industrial waste flow untreated into the sea, under the surface of which plump, farmed oysters swell on a maze of wires; and out there on the not-so-distant horizon, fishing boats trawl unchallenged far closer to shore than written law permits.

Mailiao Industrial Park, Yunlin County (25.6.06).

But it is not in the nature of these dolphins to migrate, even despite these increasingly unpleasant circumstances. And besides, the foul effluent that swirls in the waves even provides them, via their undiscerning prey, with nutrients in these increasingly barren hunting grounds.

Grey Faced Buzzard Eagle: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

Please assist us in helping protect the Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle and other Taiwan raptors by voicing your concern over the recent hunting of the species and other raptors by sending a letter of concern to the Taiwan authorities.

Letter of Concern Over the Recent Hunting of Raptors in Southern Taiwan

Send an email to President Chen Shui-bian.

The Cc recipients: Premier Su-Tseng-chang (Confirmation email will be sent in Mandarin with the English instruction "Please click the web site above to confirm your e-mail to Premier Su." Click on the blue highlighted link. A copy of your e-mail will come up--respond by clicking the left icon at the bottom of the e-mail. A confirmation message will appear in Mandarin and English) , People First Party Chairman James Soong; Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen; Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Yin Ling-ying; the Tourism Bureau; National Science Council; the Council of Agriculture; Kending National Park Administration; Construction and Planning Agency; Ministry of the Interior; Taiwan National Parks; Tian, Choucin; Lai, Hsinyuan; Chao, Yongcing (members of the Sustainability Commission of the Legislative Yuan); Wild at Heart.

The Letter
How to send:
Copy and paste the following. Then add your name, city and country at the end of the letter.

To (President Chen Shui-bian's e-mail addresses): oop62@mail.oop.gov.tw, abian@mail.oop.gov.tw

Cc to the following:
eyemail@eyemail.gio.gov.tw,chairman@pfp.org.tw,
ylhga001@mail.yunlin.gov.tw,ly10998a@ly.gov.tw, tbroc@tbroc.gov.tw, nsc@nsc.gov.tw, coa@mail.coa.gov.tw, ktnp@kt.ktnp.gov.tw, cpamail@cpami.gov.tw, npweb@cpami.gov.tw, ly11000d@ly.gov.tw, ly59691@ly.gov.tw, lym178a@ly.gov.tw, comment@wildatheart.org.tw

Subject: The Recent Hunting of Raptors in Southern Taiwan

Letter:
Re: The Recent Hunting of Raptors in Southern Taiwan
To The President of the Republic of China,
President Chen Shui-bian.

Cc: Premier Su-Tseng-chang (Confirmation email will be sent--respond by clicking the left icon) , People First Party Chairman James Soong; Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen; Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Yin Ling-ying; the Tourism Bureau; National Science Council; the Council of Agriculture; Kending National Park Admistration; Construction and Planning Agency; Ministry of the Interior; Taiwan National Parks; Tian, Choucin; Lai, Hsinyuan; Chao, Yongcing (members of the Sustainability Commission of the Legislative Yuan); Wild at Heart

Dear Sir,

For more than twenty years the Government of the Republic of China and conservationists have worked together to protect the Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle Butastur indicus and other raptors from hunting in Taiwan. These combined efforts have been largely successful in limiting the practice of hunting raptors and were very encouraging. Indeed, they were a conservation success story that Taiwan could be very proud of.

Recent media reports have informed both the nation and the international community that during the last migration period of September and October that hundreds and possibly thousands of Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle and some other raptors have been hunted in Southern Taiwan. This hunting is unacceptable and only serves to tarnish the image of the nation.

I urge the authorities to find those responsible for this outrage and bring them to justice. I also request that the authorities put firm measures in place that will continually be monitored to ensure that this disgraceful and barbaric practice of hunting raptors does not persist. Further, I ask that the authorities make special arrangements for the protection of migrant species such as the Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle Butastur indicus and Chinese Sparrowhawk Accipiter soloensis when they pass through Taiwan in large numbers on migration.

This wondrous spectacle of nature as thousands of Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle and Chinese Sparrowhawk gather in Kenting National Park from late September to mid October draws thousands of raptor lovers to the area. Taiwan is indeed blessed to host such an awe inspiring natural event. With this comes responsibility and that is to ensure that these noble creatures are given safe passage through Taiwan on their journey to other lands. The migration of birds is the earth’s only truly unifying natural phenomenon. It binds the nations and the continents of the world together in a way that nothing else does and gives a shared responsibility to all of mankind that it is preserved.

Yours sincerely,

(Name)
(City, Country)

Grey Faced Buzzard Eagle: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

by Mark B. Wilkie

Mark B.Wilkie is a Taiwan based educator and birder. He serves as a moderator on the large international net based birding community, birdforum.net and is a member of various birding and conservation societies.

The sight of a raptor soaring has inspired mankind through the ages. Nations and armies have used the image of a raptor to symbolize their power. Somehow the very sight of a raptor on the wing stirs something deep within us. It is the image of power and the very essence of a predator. It moves effortlessly and with absolute grace. It soars on high, above all, swooping down to kill in an awesome climax of noble grace, cunning speed and ruthless power. To many the eagle and its allies are indeed the ultimate predator and the personification of man’s desires incarnate.

Crested Goshawk: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

These very virtues of the raptor have put it in direct competition with man and that conflict has played out over the ages in a number of ways and has almost always, if not always, spelt destruction for the free spirit of these noble creatures.

Man has captured raptors to make use of their skills. They have been destroyed when they have competed with us for food; poisoned and hunted when they have taken our livestock. Their feathers have been collected to decorate our costumes and in Taiwan they have fallen victim to those that wish to capture and possess their spirit.

Common Kestrel: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

In Japan the virtues of raptors and the qualities they represent are admired. People desire to possess a mount of one of these noble creatures believing that it brings such esteemed qualities as prosperity and good fortune into the life of the owner. As Taiwan’s isolation grew with the Republic of China’s regime in Taipei still claiming to represent all of China in the 60s and 70s it lead to Taiwan’s environmental isolation too. With little or no control, the hunting of raptors in Taiwan for export as mounts to Japan grew alarmingly. To a lesser extent raptors were hunted for food, Chinese medicine, and for mounts for the local market. Some believed that the eating of a raptor would impart various attributes to them.

Chinese Sparrowhawk: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

Between 1976 and 1977, sixty-thousand Grey-faced Buzzard Eagles Butastur indicuswhere shipped to Japan. Grey-faced Buzzard Eagles Butastur indicus were not the only raptors being hunted and shipped. Large numbers of Crested Serpent Eagle Spilornis cheela and smaller numbers of Besra Accipiter virgatus, Chinese Sparrowhawk Accipiter soloensis, Crested Goshawk Accipiter trivirgatus, Oriental Honey-Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus, Osprey Pandion haliatus, Mountain Hawk Eagle Spizaetus nipalensis, and Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus were also being hunted and shipped to Japan.

Oriental Honey-Buzzard: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

Through the efforts of concerned individuals and groups in Taiwan, Japan, and internationally, the plight of the Taiwan raptors was tackled. Awareness was raised through education. The government was persuaded to issue postage stamps and mint coins depicting the Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle and Brown Shrike Lanius cristatus to help raise awareness of the plight of migrating birds. Taiwan was permitted to join the East Asia Bird Conservation Union and in October 1983 at the East Asian Bird Protection Societies meeting held in Kenting, Southern Taiwan the authorities burnt confiscated shrike traps. In 1989 laws were passed affording the Grey-faced Buzzard protection and the practice of hunting raptors had sharply declined. Raptor watching has become a major activity in Kenting National Park in October and Baguashan in April.

Crested Serpant Eagle: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

In recent years the hunting of raptors does not seem to have been a major concern to conservationists. Conservation efforts to stem the tide of raptor hunting have been viewed as having been pretty successful. The practice has certainly continued in secret but it would appear that the number of birds hunted has been low. Whether this has truly been the case is not really known. In Ferguson-Lees’s acclaimed “Raptors of the World,” a figure of a thousand Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle is given for the annual number of birds shot over Taiwan during the two migration periods per year. Ferguson-Lees’s figure is very worrying. The Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle only passes through Taiwan on passage during migration and is known to be hunted in the Philippines and other areas that the species passes through.

Osprey: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

Media reports of possibly thousands of Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle and smaller numbers of other raptors being hunted during the recent September-October migration period in the Southern Taiwan, Kenting National Park area are worrying. Once again, there is a need to raise awareness and highlight the plight of Taiwan’s raptors and insist that the authorities take action against those responsible. Additional measures must be put in place to protect these magnificent birds as they pass through Taiwan in their thousands in one of nature’s greatest spectacles.

Please assist us in helping protect the Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle and other Taiwan raptors by voicing your concern over the recent hunting of the species and other raptors by sending a letter of concern to the Taiwan authorities.

Brown Shrike: Photo courtesy of Richard Yu

Fairy Pitta: Wu Chong-han, Yunlin Wild Bird Association

A beautiful, brilliantly coloured, sparkling little migratory songbird called the Fairy Pitta comes to the Huben area in Yunlin County every year to breed. Some of its most lush habitat is under threat of being inundated for the sake of the Hushan Dam project, which will supply water primarily to two highly polluting new industrial complexes on the west coast. While Taiwan's Humpback dolphin
(Sousa chinesis) and an endless list of other species and subspecies will also feel the effects of the resulting changes in fresh water flow, loss of habitat and the pollution that will be caused by the factories, we have neither the manpower nor, for all we know, the capacity on our server to write in detail about all of those in danger, so here is just a little about the Fairy Pitta.

Also, if you sympathise with our protest against the Hushan Dam project, you can help us by signing our petition. The movement against this project is a joint effort by numerous environmental groups and individuals across Taiwan, and although the voices calling for construction are loud and backed with more money than we could ever imagine, we are still hearing encouraging noises from many people interested in helping and we are still fighting to save the area and its inhabitants.

The Hushan Dam project is also a huge drain on the resources of Wild at Heart and our co-campaigners, so another way you can help is to make a donation.

Please write to us at comment@wildatheart.org.tw with any questions.

Fairy Pitta Information Sheet
Christina MacFarquhar
29.8.06

Distribution

The Fairy Pitta (Pitta nympha) is one of several species previously known collectively as the Indian Pitta¹. It belongs to the Pittidae family of the order Passeriformes. A migrant songbird, it is distributed in Hainan Island, Vietnam and possibly Southern China in the winter, and flies to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Southeastern China to breed in the summer. Sightings have also been recorded in Borneo and Australia.

The Pitta nests in many parts of Taiwan. The Huben (湖本) area in Yunlin County (雲林縣) has records of consistently large numbers, and is believed to be the most densely populated Pitta habitat in the country.

Lush vegetation of Huben ideal for nest-building (30.4.06)

Nesting and breeding in Taiwan

Adult Pitta arrive in Taiwan in early April to reclaim familiar old breeding grounds, and return with their young to their wintering grounds in Autumn. The peak breeding season is in May and June, and it is from late April until early May that the male Pitta’s call can be heard most frequently - two consecutive notes with an interval of a semi-tone or a whole tone. This serves as both a mating call and as a territorial warning signal to other males. It can be heard calling up to a mile away in the forest.

A pair of Pitta will build their nest using bamboo leaves, plant fibres, twigs and small branches, and will line it with soft mosses and plant fibres. It is compact and round, with the entrance on one side, and the colours of the materials selected provide an effective camouflage. They may choose to build it in the crevices of tree roots or rocks on the steep, dark, moist slopes of a mountain ravine, or higher up in the foliage at the top of a tree trunk, at heights ranging from one to five meters above the ground.

The entrance, however, will be placed in a spot without much vegetation, for ease of access, and to avoid attack by predators that could conceal themselves amongst leaves.

A Pitta calls but remains concealed (30.4.06)

Caution is also exhibited each time the Pitta returns to its nest throughout the breeding process. It will often perch nearby, scanning the area for danger, and then take an indirect flight path back to the nest.

After split-second copulation, the female will form and lay an egg every day. She will usually lay four or five, while six eggs are possible but very rare. She and her mate will wait until she has laid her last egg before taking turns to incubate them, a process that lasts two weeks. In this way they can be sure that all eggs will hatch at the same time, which is more efficient and less troublesome for the pair than if they were to hatch separately, as much energy must be spent searching for food as soon as the young have hatched.

Raising the young

Based on recent years' experience, as Taiwan's "environmental protection" laws and regulations have been passed and adopted like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, an observer from Mars would probably report back that the more laws brought into existence, the worse the environment gets. The slew of environmental legislation passed by elected officials has only green-washed relationships between Taiwan's government officials and businesspeople, disguising corrupt bargains and backdoor dealings that are selling away Taiwan's future.

The Hushan dam project threatens to submerge 228 hectares of beautiful forested land, and with that the homes of hundreds of plant and animal species in this biologically rich area in Yunlin County, Taiwan. Although it was originally claimed that the dam was necessary to solve Yunlin's water shortage and land subsidence problems, it is now certain that this was untrue, and that the water will actually go to two new factories that will greatly increase the already serious pollution of the surrounding water, soil and air. (Click here for more details.)

You can help us save Hushan by emailing this petition to the politicians listed within. Just copy and paste the letter onto an email or word file, delete the names of all of the recipients except the one you want to send it to (this can be repeated for all names on the list), and email it to the addresses provided. In order that we can record the number of petitions sent, please CC your letter or send a copy to comment@wildatheart.org.tw.

You-cing Valley, Hushan (Photo: EEC)

We also need help to keep funding this campaign, which is a joint effort between many groups and individuals in Taiwan. Any donations would be gratefully received and carefully allocated. Please click here to donate online (the best way to avoid large bank charges), and send us an email at comment@wildatheart.org.tw if you have any questions or wish to specify the project you would like to support.

By Christina MacFarquhar

Ci-sing Farm, Houli (10.6.06)

On Friday 30 June, voices of fury, sadness and deep disappointment resounded in the halls of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) headquarters as news filtered out that the EIA review committee had voted ten to eight in favor of a hi tech development in Houli (后里), Taichung County. Houli residents, who had made the trip to Taipei to voice their protest, spoke quietly of their dismay, while two commissioners announced their resignation and others emerged from the conference room to complain bitterly of procedural lapses that had led to this result, declaring the death of Taiwan’s EIA system.

The proposed development is an expansion of the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學工業區) into Ci-sing Farm (七星農場), a rolling meadow in the south of the town, owned by Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台灣糖業公司) and rented out along the periphery to a few small-scale vegetable and honey farmers. In recent years, the town has made a successful transition from simple agricultural production to becoming an agricultural distribution center with buyers located throughout the country. However, after the approval in February of a development for semiconductor facilities at Houli Farm in the north of the town, which was followed quickly by the initial review for the second part of the Science Park development at Ci-sing, residents began to hold meetings to discuss the potential health, environmental and social effects of the industry that threatened to transform their town.

Houli farmers protest outside EPA (30.6.06)

On 10 June, Mr. You Gen-ben (游根本), a resident of Houli, strolled by the meadow, talking about the town’s draw on tourists from all corners of Taiwan, who arrive every weekend to cycle along the old Houfeng train route, past Ci-sing Farm and on to the horse riding center, or to buy locally produced grapes. “Look at the smiles on their faces,” he said. “That’s not something you can buy. People in Taiwan need places like this to take their kids and enjoy their time off work.”

Cyclists on Houfeng Railroad bike path (10.6.06)

Residents fear that tourism in Houli will be affected by the Science Park construction on Ci-sing Farm. But according to Professor Kuo Hong-yu (郭鴻裕), an agricultural scientist on the EIA review committee and a former resident of Houli, by far the most serious threat to residents will be the pollution. Already encircled by a steel plant, an incinerator and a paper mill, Houli would now be faced with a new set of pollutants, including at least 911 tons a year of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the Ci-sing plant alone, as well as endocrine disruptors from the Houli semiconductor plant.

Christina MacFarquhar

Sakadang River, Taroko Gorge (18.6.06)

It may be some people's ideal way of enjoying one of Taiwan's most beautiful scenic locations: hiding away in one's own personal chalet with natural hot spring water on tap in a nearby building and a masseuse on hand to smooth away any anxiety brought on by the sound of crunching glass as the tour bus sped through one too many tunnels on the road up from Hualien. This, at least, was the vision recently promoted by the proprietors of the Grand Formosa Hotel, located in Taroko National Park's Tien-siang Village, as the new face of this famous tourist destination, to be realized through collaboration with the head of the National Park Administration, Huang Wun-cing. However, since this Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) plan involved disregard for several laws protecting the Park's resources and the rights of local aboriginal people, and threatened to turn the public area around Tian-siang into a sweeping extension of the Hotel's private grasp on the village, Wild at Heart's National Park expert, Lynn Lin, spearheaded a successful campaign to push a pin in the conspirators' bubble.

Liwu River, turbid after heavy rain (17.6.06)

According to the Hotel's investment plan, water would be channeled from a point on the Liwu River 1km south of Wen-shan hot springs, a popular semi-natural bathing spot that was closed off in March 2005 after a bather was killed by falling rocks. As those familiar with the Park will be aware, the fragility of the hillsides is becoming more apparent with each passing typhoon, as well as unrelated landslides. Several of the trails around Tien-siang have been closed in recent months due to debris flow; Bai-yang trail, for example, now ends abruptly halfway with a loose pile of rubble, and not surprisingly, considering the powdery bedrock that towers overhead on either side, interspersed with sections of stone.

Debris flow blocking Bai-yang trail (18.6.06)

Ms. Huang, however, had little to say about the potential harm that could be caused to the structure of the gorge by drilling, nor the fact that Taiwan's Hot Spring Act forbids exploitation of what the developers had identified as a hot spring outcrop. She also attempted to bypass restrictions on development of "special scenic areas" by redefining the planned development area as part of the Tien-siang "recreation area".

The Grand Formosa Hotel, Tien-siang (18.6.06)

Click here to download a list of birds recorded in the Huben area, which is to be flooded as part of the Hushan Dam project.

This list was adapted by Mark Wilkie, a member of Yunlin Wild Bird Society, from a list compiled by Lin Ruey-Shing (林瑞興), a researcher at Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute who has dedicated several years of study to the Fairy Pitta (Pitta nympha) at Huben.

Click here to read an excerpt of "Who wrung the river dry?", a book by Li Gen-jheng, director of the Ecological Education Center in Kaohsiung, about the geological, ecological, social and legal controversies surrounding the Hushan dam project.

You-cing Valley, Hushan (Photo: EEC)

Help with translation of the remainder, which can be read online here, would be most welcome.

By Christina MacFarquhar

Dr. Cathy Kapica, Global Nutrition Director of McDonald’s corporation, was not seen publicly burning copies of Eric Schlosser's books during her visit to Taiwan last week. But chances are that this leg of her Asia tour was part of a major PR campaign to discredit the author's new book and film about the fast food industry, which are said to have caused quite a stir in the corporation’s headquarters. However, there may be little cause for concern for McDonald’s in Taiwan, where the fast-food giant has successfully charmed its way into the hearts of consumers and government officials alike, blurring the line between health education and junk-food propaganda.

When addressing a health-conscious audience, Dr. Kapica, just like her good friend Ronald McDonald, knows better than to brag about the company’s burgers. Instead, she comes loaded with a lot of good, solid advice. For instance, on Saturday 20 May she talked about “helping children choose nutrient-rich foods” at a conference at Taichong’s Hungkuang University, co-organized by the Chinese Nutrition Society.

Grafitti in Xi-men Township, Taipei (LR)

The Society is just one of many groups with whom McDonald’s has succeeded in forming cozy partnerships in Taiwan. The Department of Health currently endorses the company's most well-known PR agent, Ronald McDonald, as he tours schools to educate children on health and hygiene. Also, in 1999 McDonald’s was granted permission by the Koo Foundation Sun Yet-Sen Cancer Center to set up Taiwan's first “Ronald McDonald Family Room” for the visitors of sick children, which has since been replicated in other hospitals around the country.

Yet it was less than ten years ago that courts in England ruled against the corporation on several charges relating to precisely this kind of false, manipulative PR campaigning. In the longest-running legal battle in English history, known as McLibel, activists Dave Morris and Helen Steel successfully proved that the company exploited children, was misleading in the healthy images portrayed in its advertising, and that eating too much McDonald’s food was linked to heart disease. Since the trial, the negative health, social and environmental effects of the fast food industry have repeatedly been highlighted in books, films and on websites.

So where was Taiwan when all this was going on? Everywhere one looks today, Ronald McDonald seems to have his big red foot in the door of some government agency, school or health institution, and is becoming an ever-more robust Trojan horse in the corporation’s campaign to keep kids munching on fries. Indeed, Ronald's mission has not been affected by the attacks on his creators, but he has instead been given a makeover and sent back out into society reinforced with a smart new set of principles - stolen straight from the mouths of his fiercest critics. And all it took was a little cut and paste job from the Dummie's Guide to Nutrition.

by Christina MacFarquhar

Residents of Jibei Island, located in the north of the Penghu archipelago, were joined this spring by environmental groups and legislators in a successful attempt to block a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) project that could have been devastating to the island’s ecology and small local businesses. In a public hearing held by the Sustainability Forum of the Legislative Yuan on 9 March 2006, demands were made on developers and government agencies to justify the haphazard Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), the exclusion of local opinion in the decision-making process, and an attempt to whitewash the long-running illegal occupation of land by tourism operators. Yet some of the decisions reached at the meeting seem to have fallen on deaf ears, and pressure is still being exerted on the island to conform to this heavy construction-based pattern of development.

A stormy day on Shawei spit (CM)

Christina MacFarquhar

Plans were first laid to submerge You-cing Valley in December 1994. Located in the Hushan area, 10 km south-east of Douliu City in Yunlin County, the valley would be filled with water diverted from the Cing-shui River and dammed just north of Hushan Village. The resulting reservoir would, according to developers, provide the means to relieve Yunlin County of its shortage of agricultural and domestic water, and mitigate the serious land subsidence that had occurred through excessive pumping of groundwater. More than ten years later, however, the dam still exists only on paper, and a growing number of people are fighting to keep it that way.

You-cing Valley: CM, Wild at Heart

The following is an excerpt from "Who wrung the river dry?", a book by Li Gen-jheng, director of the Ecological Education Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, about the geological, ecological, social and legal controversies surrounding the Hushan dam project.

Help with translation of the remainder, which can be read online here, would be most welcome.

You-cing Valley, Hushan (Photo: EEC)

Acknowledgments

In Taiwan, it is not only secret documents relating to state security that are hard to obtain; much information that should be freely available is not. This leads to serious differences between the information held by government, engineering consultants and academia.

Nevertheless, this book tries to offer objective information based on what evidence we do possess, for the purpose of establishing a basis for dialogue and public supervision.

I would like to express my thanks to Sam Lin (林聖崇Lin Sheng-chong), a veteran of Taiwan’s environmental movement, for inspiring the argument for comprehensive information on the September 1999 earthquake, the collapse of Tsao-ling Pond, and coastal subsidence, and also to Yunlin Wild Bird Society for information on frogs and birds such as the Fairy Pitta, as well as to Professor Yang Kuo-jhen of Providence University for his professional support in the subjects of plant ecology and geography.

For the last three years Miss Lin Dai-ching and I have devoted ourselves to compiling information and doing follow-up work on the issues of social equality and water resources, and we continue to write up our findings.

This book has been produced with limited human and material resources. We welcome any comments and criticism.

Chen Shui-Bian,
President of the Republic of China

Re: Impact of Hushan dam project on Huban Important Bird Area

Honorable Sir,

BirdLife International is a global alliance of conservation organisations working together for the world's birds and people in over 100 countries worldwide. Globally, BirdLife International has over 2,500,000 members.

This press relesase was issued after the press conference held on 28 March 2006 regarding opposition to interference by the Executive Yuan into the professional work of the EIA Committee

Date: 28.3.2006

Issued by: Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, Yuan Jhen United Legal Services

Yesterday, nine EIA commissioners signed a joint statement protesting the sending of messages through the media by the Executive Yuan and its other ministries and commissions, in an attempt to interfere in the EIA reviews for the major developments such as the Central Taiwan Science Park projects in Houli and Cising, the Formosa Plastics steel plant and China Petroleum projects in Yunlin.

27.3.2006

This statement expresses protest against interference by the Executive Yuan in the professional work of EIA commissioners, and insists that all development cases should be subject to an identical and independent review process.

In response to the Executive Yuan's bold statement to the press yesterday that Taiwan's EIA process has become the biggest obstacle to the country's development, and demanding that major cases such as the Central Taiwan Science Park, Kuo Kuang Petrochemical Technology Corp. and the Formosa Plastics steel plant be approved as quickly as possible, this statement raises the most solemn objections. Such one-sided public statements by Executive Yuan not only seriously affect the image of the EIA system, but also interfere in the independent and professional review system.

This updated edition of McLibel, released in April 2005 in London, covers the story of two English campaigners who were sued for libel by the McDonald's corporation in 1990. Helen Steel and Dave Morris had produced and distributed a flier entitled "What's wrong with McDonald's?", exposing the exploitative, deceptive and cruel practices of the company. Helen and Dave chose to fight the case, which became the longest-running case in English legal history.

After the verdict was delivered in 1997, Helen and Dave then took the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights, on the grounds that English libel laws breach the Europeans Convention of Human Rights, denying legal aid to defendants such as themselves, and allowing wealthy, powerful corporations such as McDonald's an unfair advantage. The verdict for the European trial was delivered in February 2005, and was decided in favour of Helen and Dave.
Mclibel was screened on Taiwan's Public Television PTS on 25 November 2005.

How to get a copy:
If you make a donation of NT$395 on our website, we will send you a copy. Or if you’d like to pick it up in person and save us the paper and stamps, just donate NT$350! In either case, remember to send us an e-mail telling us your name, address and how we can contact you.

If you need more than one copy, want a copy you can screen in public, or if you live outside Taiwan, write to mclibel@wildatheart.org.tw.

Reviews (Spanner Films' McLibel site)

Read about the McLibel case

Read "I'm lovin' it": Guardian Unlimited, March 4, 2006

Christina MacFarquhar

Note: A version of this piece is featured in the Taipei Times as a letter to the editor.

On 27 January 2006, residents of Hsiengong and Luermen townships in Tainan County received a long-awaited first installment of compensation from the EPA. The monthly sum of NT$1814 per person is partly intended to pay for continuing medical treatment of various illnesses caused by toxic pollution at a nearby chemical plant between 1942 and 1982. However, the case has yet to reach a final conclusion, and many are dissatisfied with the outcome of court proceedings to date.

Company’s toxic track record
Anshun plant, situated northwest of Tainan City, has changed hands, names and products several times since its construction by the Japanese in 1942. Originally producing hydrochloric acid, caustic soda, liquid chlorine, and also poison gas for the Japanese navy, by the early 1970s it had become Asia’s biggest producer of the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), under the title of state-owned Taiwan Alkali Industrial Corporation (TAIC). After closing in 1982 for economic reasons, it merged with China Petrochemical Development Corporation, which then privatized in 1994, inheriting TAIC and all its property.

Once renowned simply for its vast production volume, news is now spreading that the company site holds some more sinister records. The bottom mud in neighbouring Luermen River has the highest dioxin levels for a river in Taiwan, and one local resident has the highest recorded blood dioxin concentration in the world. In January 2006, the dioxin concentration in one ditch on the site was found to be 64 million TEQ ng/m3 – 64 thousand times the accepted standard.

Christina MacFarquhar

Note: A version of this piece is featured in the Taipei Times as a letter to the editor.

China’s State Forestry Administration announced on 6 January 2006 that two giant pandas, from among 11 suspects being held at the Wolong Center in Sichuan, have just been charged and sentenced to exile in a prison on Taiwan, for being too endangered and attractive to be granted permanent residency in their homeland. The Administration didn’t exactly use those words, preferring China's official term "gift" (although there are plenty of more fitting words for a transaction in which goods and money change hands). But that is what it comes down to--the further persecution of a species already threatened by modern man's determined reshaping of the natural environment, due to its perceived usefulness as a cuddly, charismatic bartering chip by the Chinese government.

Two Decisions and The Taiwan Black Bear Fund: A Tribute to My Parents on 1 January 2006

Robin Winkler

(This is an adapted and slightly altered version of an article that first appeared in Wild's Chinese-language site on 26 December 2005)

We poor Taiwanese

I was really upset after the 19 December Environmental Impact Assessment Commission (EIAC) meeting. There are a number of reasons for my being upset, but the main factor was likely the stunning performance by those commissioners and members of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) that support what I would call "conventional" development, and the relatively weak performance by those of us on the committee who tend to be more conservative when it comes to spending taxpayers' money and who would like to take a little more time reviewing cases in order to effectively carry out our mandate under the laws.¹

Also, many of those who should have been at the meeting were not represented. Perhaps because they hadn't been notified, or perhaps because even if they received a notice, they wouldn't have been able to understand it if for no other reason than the nonsensical nature of one of G-d's² creatures (humans) being so self centered and short sighted as to even propose such a "development" project. Might we mourn for the waters of Taiwan; its seashores; its mountains and forests? For we, and all generations that follow are so much poorer after that meeting.

Christina MacFarquhar

Yesterday I went to Taipei City Zoo to see the animals. Not those in the animal "houses", but those outside in the open, milling around with their young, having temporarily escaped from their own pens and cages in the city into the more verdant, exotic territory of Taiwan's resident penguins, koalas and elephants.

The koala house, situated near the zoo entrance, was very popular, judging by the constant flow of humans through the small gallery at the front. Perhaps "flow" is not quite the right word to describe their behaviour; after all, some did pause for ten or twenty seconds, a few even for a whole minute. They would look into the glass and concrete boxes that the koalas live in, and let out different calls. I wondered what they were doing, so I observed them a little longer.

I counted altogether six different calls. The first, mostly from the young, went like this: "Is it fake?"

From E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, p. 53

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a person a chance to utilize and develop his or her faculties; to enable him or her to overcome ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

Wild's view: How can it be that in a country where a large percentage of the population are religious, we tolerate activities that "create jobs" that the author likens to committing a crime?

When speaking with people we need to use "people logic;" when speaking with "ghosts" we need to use "ghost logic."¹

While maintaining reservations on the appropriateness of quantifying anything in nature, we need to accept the fact that most people, as is the case with most individuals of all other species, seem only able to view things from their own perspective—anthropocentrically.

This is a fact, albeit a fact that has gotten the human species into a fair bit of trouble during the past 10,000 years or so following the adoption of totalitarian agriculture, gathering in cities, and embarking on a journey where the meaning of life is increasingly defined by a minority of people whose social and environmental attention span is that of a quarterly or annual budget period, a five year plan, or a politician's term of office—or shorter.

Karl Flessa, a professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona has done a very interesting and revealing study on the value of the Colorado River and the "losses" caused by its damming. Following the work of Robert Constanza, et. al., he has shown through the language of "ghosts" (insatiable economists and their beneficiaries), how perhaps we human economic experts really don't know that much about economics, value, costs, and the rest of the natural world.

Professor Flessa has kindly agreed to permit Wild at Heart to reproduce his original and follow up presentations and to translate them into Chinese. We have been busily alerting many people in the Taiwan's public and private sectors of Constanza and Flessa's work in the hope that some of our own people will begin to calculate the true costs of short term development. One professor at Academia Sinica has expressed interest and is looking at using these models to develop more information on the area of Taiwan's Jhuoshui River where the construction of a dam is imminent.

If there are any volunteers out there who would like to join this or other similar projects we would love to hear from you.

If you are interested in more, you might also like to check out the new Chinese translation of Paul Hawken's classic, The Ecology of Commerce, published by Third Nature Publishers, Taiwan, as the first book in its "Wild at Heart Series" of basic books.

¹For a little more explanation on the use of this term from Buddhism, please see Derrick Jensen's essay, which can also be read on his Web site.

In response to the recent publication by the Chinese Forestry Bureau of names selected for the pandas China wishes to send to Taiwan, in addition to the announcement by Taipei City Zoo that it has submitted a proposal for raising the pandas to the Council of Agriculture, the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan, Humanistic Education Foundation, Homemakers' Union and Foundation, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan jointly called a press conference on October 16, 2005 to make the following statement:

We propose the application of universal values based on protecting endangered animals and allowing animals to live and raise their young in freedom. We call on the government and the public to support the effort to let the pandas stay in their true homeland, and to substitute long-distance adoption of the animals in China for the plan to remove them from their home, raise them in captivity and put them on display as part of a gift-making activity that shows no regard for the natural behavior or needs of the species.

The environmentally sensitive Pinglin area, which supplies much of Taipei with clean water, is in danger of being opened to increased traffic (and subsequent pollution runoff). "High stakes at the Pinglin interchage", which appears in En Pots, is one perspective which notes the absence of the courts in this controversy.

Legislators and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) have proposed a "draft EE (environmental education) law". Several hearings have been held on the proposed law beginning with a closed discussion held among certain scholars commissioned by the EPA on 13 September 2004. Wild at Heart has been offering suggestions throughout the process. What follows after the jump is a summary of our comments.

On Wednesday, 28 September 2005, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) will hold a discussion on the feasibility of controlling traffic volume. The meeting will be held at 3:30 p.m. at the EPA offices, 41 Jhong-hua Rd., Taipei.

Wild at Heart has appreciated information and help from Carbusters in
the past, and would welcome any input from other groups interested in this issue. Please e-mail chrismac@wildatheart.org.tw.

Environmental Education - Feeling the Pain

On seeing the children play with electronic toys that make electronic noises – I thought about how much they are missing and what kind of an education and conditioning they are receiving. The sounds that our ears evolved for millions of years to hear are the sounds of the oceans, the wind, the rustle of the leaves, the rain falling, the gentle voices of people, insects and other animals, all of whom have been evolving for as much as a 1000 times longer than the human animal's time on earth. How the sounds of the city deprive children of those sounds, how computers, television and radio take up the space of their minds and senses, not only inhibiting their ability to perceive, distinguish and enjoy those natural phenomena, but even more perniciously, conditioning them to accept these sounds as a natural part of their surroundings. No wonder how noisy things are these days! But perhaps we can try to spend a little more energy and creativity to give these children more than just the sounds of an electronic beep or telephone to store within their growing minds.

Robin Winkler

The Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, along with the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), Taiwan Academy of Ecology, Green Citizens' Action Alliance, and Homemaker's Union and Foundation, vehemently oppose the use of "sacrificial pigs" in the name of "folk tradition". In annual "Pigs of God" contests that take place all over Taiwan, pigs are force fed in a competition to raise the biggest animal and then publicly slaughtered.

It takes about two years to get a pig ready for these "competitions", during which the animals are force fed (the pigs are always male and often castrated--it is believed this helps them gain weight) until they reach about 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds). The pigs are then exhibitied in front of thousands of people before having their throats cut. Some don't even make it that far—they've already died from overfeeding.

Speak out against this blatant violation of the Animal Protection Act! Contact the Council of Agriculture OR the Ministry of the Interior.

To: The National Energy Conference
From: Robin Winkler
Taiwan Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association
wildatheart.org.tw
21 June 2005

Time to Question Assumptions (2): Energy

Against the background of developments in “cold fusion” several decades ago there was talk of “energy too cheap to meter,” a phrase that seems to come up in the context of nuclear energy time and again. An unlimited supply of cheap, clean and stable energy - everyone’s dream, and especially attractive to the imported energy dependent Taiwanese as we conclude these two days of discussions on global warming, responses to Kyoto, keeping a balance between the environment and the economy, and jump-starting a host of new business opportunities.

Allow me to digress. Humans first inhabited Taiwan about 15,000 years ago. Paleolithic, Neolithic peoples flourished throughout the island over these millennia and today Taiwan is graced with traces of these original human inhabitants, the approximately 2% of our population comprised of twelve recognized tribes and a number of asyet unrecognized indigenous peoples.

Digressing even further to about 2.5 million years ago, the land mass we know as Taiwan, for what was probably the third time, emerged from the Pacific Ocean through the collision of Philippine and Eurasian continental plates. That uplifting continues today, as does the gradual northeasterly drift of Taiwan, both phenomena explaining in part Taiwan’s high mountains and geologic unpredictability. In this environment of severe instability over four thousand plants and at least 400,000 insects and other animal species developed such that Taiwan is said to be second in the world in terms of diversity based on land mass of a country.

While records of Chinese visits to the island go back to the 11th century, outside contact really began with the Dutch and Portugese in the 17th century, followed by the Chinese migrations, Japanese invasions, and other incursions by a wide range of other opportunists and adventurers, including the author. Without exception, these visitors, upon arrival in Taiwan, were struck with the island’s natural abundance andbeauty.

We could thus say that these indigenous plants, people and other animals managed very well in Taiwan for quite some time.

So, in the space of 400 years, the western and eastern cultures have taught the native Taiwanese some serious lessons about civilization, technology and, of course, about energy. All this within a period that amounts to about .016% of the time Taiwan has existed as an island, or less than 3% of the time that Taiwan was “managed” by indigenous peoples using low or no technology andminimum amounts of energy, at least in the senses of those words “technology” and “energy” that we use today.

We have had what has amounted to an island-wide, 400 year-long energy blowout party during which the “new Taiwanese” (Europeans, Chinese, Japanese) have shown the natives how things can be with no holds barred on the burdens we place on the global environment, and with no limits to what we can achieve when “energy” is cheap and technology is abundant.

The scorecard today? Half of Taiwan’s rivers are seriously polluted, nearly all are dammed or are threatened with numerous water diversion projects (dams, irrigation, etc.), we have the highest population density in the world if the inhabitable mountainous areas are excluded, the world’s highest density of nuclear power plants, second highest use of cement per capita, one of the highest levels of species extirpation in the world due to over-building and habitat destruction, over 30 percent of our ocean shore is covered in cement or by one of the 240 fishing ports, and in the meantime, suicide, divorce, crime, cancer and mental illness are rapidly rising.

Any connection between these unfortunate attributes of modern society and our excessive use of “energy” and “technology”?

When humans have had access to limitless amounts of the kinds of “energy” that have propelled industrial revolution and the conquest and assimilation of indigenous peoples around the world, the record has not been good. Of course establishing a “cause and effect” relationship between the “unmetered” energy that Taipower gives to the Tao people of Orchid Island so that they can keep their air-conditioners running day and night – regardless of whether anyone is at home – and the demise of their culture, is not easy to do. But other than because some company’s public relations department tells us so, or because some government official being paid off by that company supports the company’s PR, why should we continue to believe the message implicit in every government and business utterance that the more energy we have, the happier we will be, or the better it will be for society?

The Tao of Orchid Island suffered near complete devastation of their traditional culture when their original homes were bulldozed at the insistence of Madame Chiang Kaishek so that they could live in what she believed were “decent” homes made of concrete and rebar. Further blows came with the storage of Taipower’s nuclear waste on the island in what was supposed to have been a canning factory. One wonders what is next for the Tao people after a few years of “free energy.”

So we ask the sponsors and the presenters of the National Energy Conference: Based on the record of Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Japanese to date, do we really want more of this stuff in cheap and unlimited quantities?

A coalition of associations are working on environmental issues in
Taipei city and Taipei County, issues that share a common thread: resistance against blind development for short-term political and business gains at the expense of quality of human and other life. Inspired by the somewhat more philosophical Declaration of the Founding Purposes of the Taiwan Institute of Ecology, what follows is an attempt to get the environmental groups working from the "same page" so as to reduce the risk of our unity being undermined.

We hope that all individuals and organizations (including business and
government if they are willing to review their practices) will sign on,
and that their position papers, petitions, and legal pleadings will
reflect principles of respect for all of Nature’s creations.

Robin Winkler

As you know, regulations have recently taken effect in Taiwan that are designed to facilitate waste reduction.

You may also have heard the expression “there is no such thing as waste in nature,” which is sometimes stated “waste equals food,” a principle that all of us learned in elementary school when we looked at the interactions among worms, soil, bacteria, birds, plants and other beings that are embedded in a system of what seems to be perpetual motion (it has been 4.5 billion years in the making – or one could say 15 billion years, the estimated ages of the Earth and the Universe, respectively).

And many of you have heard the axiomatic and common statements of ecologists: “humans are a part of nature along with all the other ten-thousand beings”.

Robin J. Winkler

The people of Taiwan oppose China’s threats of violence. Meanwhile all living things in both countries are crying out to the people to cease their continuous use of violence perpetrated on the environment in the name of economic development and progress.

China has embarked on a course of development of the same kind as experienced in Taiwan which has devastated our natural environment, including the health of our human communities. Our seashores have been covered in cement, our rivers have been dammed to oblivion, our mountains, forests and plains have been despoiled, the fresh air has been exhausted, and the once rich flora and fauna are being extirpated at soaring rates. In the meantime, we tolerate and encourage through our over-consumption and voracity, the building of nuclear power and petrochemical plants, highways and resorts, hyper-marts, incinerators and landfills, and purchases of military hardware.

By Lai Weijie, Chairman, Green Citizens' Action Alliance

Nothing in the extensive reading I’ve done on Taiwan’s agricultural situation compares with the shock I received on a recent visit to a friend’s home in the country. It took place several years ago when, on a business trip to the south, we took the opportunity to visit his home in Changhwa County’s Jhu Tang Township. The younger members of my friend’s family had all left, leaving no one to plant the fields. Left behind were his sickly, bed-ridden grandmother, and their one source of income, an uncle who worked as a truck driver for an illegal gravel-mining business operating in the beds of the Jhuo Shuei River. Another older uncle who worked in Taipei had returned home to recuperate after an injury, which added another mouth to feed, but at least solved the problem of manpower in providing care to their grandmother. This chance arrangement of an injured worker and an illegal gravel miner allowed the family to remain stable by “putting everyone to good use.” I can’t shake these tragic images of hopelessness in real rural Taiwan and am constantly thinking about where this might be leading and whether change can be brought about.

At the time, deliberation of the Agricultural Development Act was underway in the legislature, though the issues attracting the most attention were rural housing development and liberalized restrictions on land sales. We had a host of questions: “What would be the basis of the three-tiered zoning system, and where would it apply?” “How much rural land should be reserved for the production of staple foods?” “To what extent is farmland responsible for preserving water resource ecology?” “What kinds of drastic change will occur in the natural and man-made vistas that are part of the rural farming ecology?” “How should we define the scope of conservation land, and how much conservation land is necessary to give “conservation” real meaning?” “If farmers are to be burdened with full responsibility for environmental preservation in important agricultural and conservation areas, does the government have a fair and equitable system for providing subsidies and compensation funds through an “ecological bank?”

The Chinese-language China Times reported today that Taiwan's biggest toxic waste cleanup ever is underway. The site is the old Anshun factory in Tainan where Taiwan Alkali Industrial Corp. (TAIC) made chemicals including DDT between 1942 and 1982. The site was then taken over by China Petrochemical Develepment Corp. a subsidiary of the state-owned China Petroleum, Taiwan's largest oil company. It is estimated that 20,000 metric tons of toxic soil will have to be removed from the site. Meanwhile, the Tainan City Environmental Protection Bureau and the Institute for Industrial Technololgy Research Industry are conducting studies on the effects of dioxin seepage on local residents and the extent of the pollution.

Once the studies are completed, the cabinet-level Environmental Protection Agency intends to demand compensation from China Petrochemical. Toxins in the soil include significant levels of dioxin, mercury, and Pentachlorophenol. Dioxin levels in the blood of area residents are the highest in Taiwan. It is believed that residentｓingested the dioxins by eating shellfish caught in the area.

The first batch of soil tests show that 40 percent of soil between .7 meters and 1.1 meters contains dioxin levels > 1000 picograms/gram. This is the Japanese limit for soil dioxin levels in residential areas. 250 picograms/gram is the Japanese warning level.

The Yunlin edition of the United Daily News (聯合報) has reported what it calls a "breakthrough" in the deadlock between conservationists and developers that has delayed the construction of the Hushan Dam in Yunlin County. According to the report, published Jan. 19, the Taiwan Forestry Bureau (林務局) agreed at a meeting on Jan. 17 to lift restrictions on the use of the land "conditionally" (analysis of other projects where the word "conditional" has been used indicate that this project has been given the green light). This was reported on the same day as the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) revealed that Formosa Plastics and Chinese Petroleum Corporation (previously rivaling contenders for land on Yunlin Offshore Business Park, which the Hushan reservoir is intended to supply) will both "have their wishes granted" (Commercial Times, 17 Jan 2005), effectively guaranteeing to meet an enormous future demand for water by these two notorious polluters. Formosa Plastics plans to build a steelworks, Chinese Petroleum Corporation a petrochemical science and technology park.

The plan to "free-up" this controversial area of Yunlin County, home to many endangered species such as the Fairy Pitta, is part of the "Hushan Reservoir Fairy Pitta Protection Alternative Measures" (湖山水庫八色鳥保護替代措施), a plan drawn up by Jhong Sing University and commissioned by the Central Water Resources Bureau. This plan has been met with great concern from environmental groups, who fear that crude surveys undertaken by the EPA have vastly underestimated bird populations and the overall biological and geological value of the land in its natural state, as well as the impact that the dam construction will have upon the local environment. In a public letter addressed to the director of Taiwan Forestry Bureau Mr. Yan Ren-De (顏仁德) in May 2004, Taiwan Academy of Ecology expressed concern that the report produced by Jhong Sing University showed little variation from previous Bureau reports, failing to address the doubts of Project Examination Committee members and indicating that the Forestry Bureau is responding to unequivocal instructions from the Central Government’s Council of Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) to assist the Central Water Resources Bureau in endorsing the Hushan Reservoir project.

Hardly surprising to those familiar with the government's code of conduct when engaging in 'consultation' on such issues, two of the major groups representing the plight of the Fairy Pitta were not informed that the Jan. 17 meeting was to take place. Neither Wild Bird Federation Taiwan (中華鳥會) nor the Yunlin Wild Bird Society (雲林鳥會) were on the invitation list, giving a clear advantage to those determined to see the plans approved. And why would they be invited when, by the sounds of the Commercial Times report, investment agreements with Formosa Plastics and Chinese Petroleum Corporation have already reached the 'fine-tuning' stages, suggesting that all those whose opinions carry any weight have already been consulted.

This article was originally published in Chinese in the Jan. 26 issue of The China Times. The author, Lin Pei-jie, is in-house counsel at Wild at Heart.

The Freedom of Information Act Alliance visited a member of the KMT legislative caucus on Jan. 17 a few weeks after the December legislative elections. Initially, he said that the KMT felt that the National Intelligence Surveillance Act should be passed simultaneously with the Freedom of Information Act. After we pressed him though, he admitted that the KMT caucus had signed off on the bill during inter-party negotiations for political considerations and that the KMT was actually worried that if the Freedom of Information Act passed, the DPP and the TSU would use the Act to attack the KMT by releasing government documents that would damage the KMT's reputation.

"Highway would ravage east coast", an editorial on the Su Hua Highway written by Robin Winkler and Eric Chung, appeared in the December 19, 2003 issue of the Taipei Times.

(Download PDF version)

Birdlife International, a global partnership of conservation organizations, reports on the Fairy Pitta and how one of its major breeding grounds is threatened by the Hushan Dam.

Related articles found on this site:

The Hushan Damnation of the Fairy Pitta

Stop the Hushan Dam, Save the Fairy Pitta and Taiwan Indigene

Taiwan Endangers Birds at Home and Abroad

For more information contact Christina MacFarquhar at chrismac@wildatheart.org.tw.

What is it that lends Tun-Hua North and South Roads, Jen-Ai Road and Yang-De Boulevard their noble beauty? And what makes the real estate along those stretches the priciest in Taipei? Why, it’s that they are blessed with those beautiful big trees, which provide the locals with infinite amounts of prestige and self-esteem.

Greenery is the soul of the urban landscape. Yet, since Daan Forest Park was set up after the first election for mayor of Taipei in 1994, aside from the scattering of little parks in the city there has been absolutely no thought given to increasing the area of greenery in Taipei, and thereby adding some visual pleasure to the stressful lives of the city-dwellers.

It is a well-known fact that the area in Yunlin County in which the Hushan Dam is to be built is geologically unstable. Many nature lovers will also be aware of the importance of Yunlin’s forests to endangered bird species such as the Fairy Pitta. The EPA, however, is choosing to turn a blind eye to these issues by giving its blessing to a construction project that is both scientifically and economically unjustified, and unnecessary for the present and future needs of the local area.

Among the more than 23 protected birds in the area, the Fairy Pitta receives the greatest attention due to the fact that the disputed region is the world’s most densely populated Fairy Pitta habitat. The Hushan reservoir will cause the fragmentation of an area that hosts not only the Fairy Pitta, but also many other birds, reptiles and amphibians, and acts as an important biological corridor.

By S.C. Wu and Ching-chun Chen

Board of Directors
Wild Bird Society of Yunlin County, Taiwan

The Hushan Dam site is located in a geologically unstable and earthquake-prone area in central Taiwan. It is designed as part of an off-stream reservoir, which would store fresh water drawn via a 6.9 kilometers pipeline over the hills from the Chingshui River in neighboring Nantou County. The dam will flood 422 hectares of a wilderness area. Two groups of residents, the migrant Fairy Pitta and the resident Taiwan indigene, are at the mercy of proponents of the project, and can only be saved by a wise choice from the government and immediate action from the conservationists near and far against the dam project.

The Chinese-language China Times reported on 13 November that despite the closing of the Sunhai Bridge in Nantou County, local farmers are using a temporary bridge to illegally access the Danda Forestry Road. The Danda Forestry road was closed after widespread flooding caused Typhoon Mindulle in July 2004 prompted a review of Taiwan's land use policies.

The Sunhai Bridge and the Danda Forestry road were built in 1957 by logging tycoon Sun Hai. Sunhai Bridge crosses the Danda River at the terminus of Highway 16 in eastern Nantou County. Beginning at an elevation of 400 meters, the original road extends 62 kilomoters into the heart of Taiwan's central mountain range reaching an altitude of 2400 meters. Sun Hai, who was Chiang Kai-shek's godson, used the road to log 5000 hectares of old growth forest. Taipower extended the road 12 more kilometers to Cicaihu, a mountain lake 2952 kilometers above sea level.

The Executive Yuan announced in July that the Sunhai bridge will not be rebuilt in order to prevent illegal logging and to end high-altitude farming. For more on the government's position, see The Story of Sunhai Bridge (in Chinese) by Chang Jing-sen, Vice-Chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development.

The Chinese-language China Times is reporting that Birdlife International is asking Taiwan not to fund a highway in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines that threatens the habitat of the endangered St. Vincent Amazon parrot . According to the article, a spokesman from Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said that Taiwan was committed to the development of its diplomatic allies and funds projects based on the recommendations of the government of the diplomatic ally. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is one of Taiwan's few diplomatic allies.

People of Hualien, why aren’t you pissed off?

Chen Yi-Ling

Do we build the Suhua Highway? While that question remains open it is certain that as the legislative elections approach there will be endless debate with all eyes on the vote, regardless of what might be the right thing to do or the right stand to take.

Dear Wild Friends,

Wild Publishing

Wild at Heart is happy and honored to present a few chapters from Strangely Like War (Download PDF here)by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan. This is part of a Wild publishing project to bring works of important authors to Taiwan, works that might not otherwise have an opportunity to be read in Taiwan, China or other Chinese-language countries.

The local press reports that the Taiwan Area National Expressway Engineering Bureau of the MOTC has filed an application to restart the Su Hua Highway project. There does not seem to be central government consensus on this however the local Hualian politicians, including candidates for the year end legislative elections and the members of the County Assembly are lobbying like there's no tomorrow. Well, it does fit in with Taiwan's passion for building stuff just because the capacity is there, but one resident of Hualian is speaking out and the Wild continues to support a number of initiatives to put the road to rest for good. Chen Yi-ling's (陳怡伶) letter to the China Times was published today and she has agreed to let us post it on our site.

And while we are at it, the TANEEB should be disbanded immediately, or better yet, let's keep all the jobs for those who want them and have those engineers and workers figure out how to best dismantle as many highways as possible and recycle the used materials, or if that doesn't generate enough ways to spend money they can consider spending it on changing the roads they don't dismantle to elevated highways that will allow the passage of flora and fauna.

According to a report in The Liberty Times (自由時報) on 4/10/04, the National Expressway Engineering Bureau (國工局) is planning to resume construction of the Suhua Highway next year. It plans to submit a new environmental discrepancy analysis at the end of October, which consists of supplementary information requested by the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee, as well as referring to information in the environmental impact statement (EIS), and is believed to be almost equivalent to a full environmental impact assessment.

The Bureau is ready for action - even the contract with the company originally awarded the tender has been retained, in order to be prepared for the resumption of construction. It claims that the Suhua project is not legally required to go through this second stage of EIS, on the grounds that it passed the assessment in 2000 (conditionally), and then submitted an environmental discrepancy analysis after route plans were changed, thereby complying with legal requirements. It also cites cooperation with numerous scholars, experts and consultants as evidence of its thorough investigation of potential impacts.

In response to environmentalists’ concerns over fault lines, ecological impact, water resources, air and noise pollution, water and soil maintenance, impact on archaelogical sites and scenery, and the actual necessity of the road, the Bureau claims to have dealt with these issues in the original EIS, and suggests that concern has arisen because people do not fully understand the situation. At the same time, however, it also claims to take such concerns more seriously than ever, owing to experience of numerous natural disasters.

In terms of fault lines, the Bureau offers the consolation that during the past 10 years of continuous assessment, the topography and land features of the area in question have not changed in any obvious way. As for ecological impact, it claims that the original routes avoided environmentally sensitive or geologically unstable regions.

The report also addresses the two disputes over bidding for the Suhua tender, one of which the Bureau states is due to the bidder having not complied with the law by failing to submit a deposit, and will be dealt with by the Public Construction Committee. The second involves a company that has already signed a contract, which will now be retained for a period of six months, after which, if construction has still not commenced, it will be readdressed.

This paper is an introduction to the Law relating to Indigenous Land Rights in New Zealand. An historical background is given so that the particular way in which Māori Land has been affected by colonization is outlined. The history will outline the changing social conditions, the effect of the New Zealand Wars and the confiscation and illegal seizure of land. The role of the Treaty of Waitangi as the basis for the partnership between Māori and European and the marginalisation and subsequent revival of the Treaty as the basis for recognition for Land Claims will be discussed. The role of the Māori Land Court, the Waitangi Tribunal and the leading Judicial Review cases establishing a legal and constitutional role as Treaty partners will complete this introduction.

Today, a handful of mega corporations generate a commercial, pseudo "culture" from the top down. Nike is the undisputed champion of logo culture, its swoosh an iconic symbol of global cool. Despite this, Phil Knight flies the flag of a fading empire. His swoosh has been hurt by years of "brand damage" as activists and culture jammers fight back against his marketing and dirty sweatshop labor.

Now it's time to rethink the cool! The Blackspot sneaker is a shoe and a message and a vision of the future -- the world's first global anti-brand. Join us in this quest to create an authentic non-corporate cool and reassert consumer sovereignty over capitalism. (courtesy of Adbusters)

An article written in June 2004 appears on the Chinese version of this site by Chiang Hui-yi concerning the proposed construction of cable cars in high mountain areas. For more background also see Taipei Times article.

Wild at Heart is working on improving Taiwan's east coast environment. We are working with members of the Taroko Tribe and other environmental groups to rid Hualian of the cement industries. The case implicates land issues, mining rights, government supervision of industry and environmental standards. The Taipei Times recently ran a feature length article on some aspects of the Asia Cement controversy.