Taiwan Today

A motion has passed which will designate Taijiang Park in southern Taiwan as the nation’s eighth national park, said Premier Liu Chao-shiuan June 30. The park, more than 40,000 hectares in size, is located in various parts of Tainan County and Tainan City. Its terrain includes the offshore Tongchi Island as well, part of the Penghu Archipelago. The Tainan City Government plans to invest more than NT$3 billion (US$90 million) in ten years in Taijiang park, to help preserve its ecological and historical sites, and to create tourism opportunities. The premier made the announcement while visiting a water-pumping construction site in the Anan District of Tainan City. At his side were Hsu Tain-tsair, mayor of Tainan city, and Chen Ting-fei, a Democratic Progressive Party legislator, who thanked Liu for his concern for Tainan. The Taijiang National Park, 20 minutes by car from downtown Tainan, is rich in cultural, historical and ecological treasurers. It was ruled at one time by Dutch colonists and at another by Koxinga, the famous military leader of the Ming dynasty. The Black Water Channel within the park once provided an important sea-lane for mainland Chinese immigrants. The park is a conservation area as well for the world famous black-faced spoonbills. Mayor Hsu had proposed designating Taijiang a national park as early as 1994, when he was still a member of the Legislative Yuan, according to an official from the Tainan County Department of Urban Development. In 2004, the Ministry of the Interior agreed to give the urban development department NT$10 million for the planning of the “Taijiang Black Water Channel National Park.” In 2008, the National Park Planning Committee of the MOI finally passed the assessment project at its 80th meeting. The Construction and Planning Agency of the MOI worked with the Tainan County Government to include two internationally important wetlands in the park, the black-faced spoonbill conservation area at the outlet of Tsengwen River, and the Sicao Wetlands of Tainan City, adding an extra 3676 hectares to its original land coverage of 1645 hectares. The entire park is five kilometers wide and 55 kilometers long, and it includes inland regions, coastal regions, wetlands, islands, and parts of the sea. It embraces the existing Sicao Wild Animals Conservation Area, the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area, the Anping Harbor National Historical Park, the upcoming wetland ecological park, and a newly established early settlement history park. Mayor Hsu emphasized that Taijiang National Park is rich in historical legacies. From the Japanese colonial period and the more recent Nationalist Government period are such legacies as salt-evaporation ponds and aqua farms. As most other countries have set up conservation areas to protect their own historic industrial heritage, the Taijiang National Park aims to catch up with this worldwide trend, too, he said.(TYH-HZW)