“Shei-pa is a park you have to walk in to enjoy,” says Lin Pei-wang (林培旺), superintendent of Taiwan's fifth and newest national park. Shei-pa (雪霸) opened in July 1992, setting aside 76,850 hectare in the northern Central Mountain Range. Located several hours by car from any major urban area, it is one of the island's most isolated areas. And it is home to many of Taiwan's rarest animal and plants.
At the park enters its first full tourist season, Lin's main goal is to ensure that the area maintains a balance between offering a much needed recreation site and preserving the habitat. “Our policy is to construct as little as possible, to minimize the impact on the natural environment,” he explains. Conserving the habitat within the national parks, Lin believes, carries an importance that extends beyond the parks themselves. “Taiwan has never had a good name in international conservation circles,” Lin say. “We are doing something to change our bad reputation. The designation of national parks is a very important step in promoting environmental awareness.”
Taiwan's first national park was established in 1984, near the southern town of Kenting. Since then, national parks have been created in Yushan, Yangming-shan, Taroko, and Shei-pa. Together, they encompass more than 318,000 hectares, or 8.5 percent of Taiwan's total area-a percentage far greater than most Western countries.
“The major functions of our national park are to protect natural and cultural resources, to provide quality recreational opportunities, and promote ecological research and education,” says Hsiao Ching-fen (蕭清芬), chief of the National Park Department, Construction and Planning Administration, Ministry of the Interior. Simultaneously conserving natural habitat and providing the public with recreation facilities is a challenge for park officials everywhere, but it is especially difficult in Taiwan-an island with one of the world's fastest growing economies and highest population densities.
Located in the mountainous center of the island where Hsinchu, Miaoli, and Taichung counties meet, Shei-pa contains more than forty peaks rising above three thousand meters. The park is named after its two largest mountains, Mt. Hsueh and Mt. Tapachien. Rising 3,886 meters above sea level, Mt. Hsueh is Taiwan's second tallest peak.
The park's rugged terrain has preserved a varied habitat for wildlife. Field surveys conducted between 1986 and 1989 show that there are at least thirty-two species of mammals and ninety-seven species of birds in the area. Many of these species, such as landlocked salmon, Formosan black bear, and Formosan salamander, are unique to Taiwan and are rare or endangered species.
How protected is the park? Regulations on land use within the national parks vary greatly with different categories of zoning. Under the National Park Law (1972), it is illegal to hunt, fish, destroy vegetation, pollute the air or water, fell trees, or pick plants anywhere within the national parks. The maximum penalty for breaking the law is a NT$5,000 (US$200) fine or one year in prison. Beyond that, the rules vary widely according to whether the land is zoned as a general protection area, recreation area, cultural/ historical site, significant scenic area, or ecological protection area.
The least regulated are the general protection areas, which make up 36 percent of all national park lands. This zoning protects the rights of people who used the land before park designation. That means, with permission from the national park department or a higher authority, residents can mine, farm, fish, rear cattle, set up billboards, and expand existing factories. Such activities have harmed some of the wilderness areas in Kenting and Yangmingshan national parks, both of which have large populations of residents.
At Shei-pa, 67 percent of the park has been zoned as an ecological protection area, the highest level of protection. In this 52,000-hectare section, the habitat is carefully protected and access is restricted mainly to scientific research. Recreational use is only allowed with a permit, and hikers must stay on the established trails.
There are five ecological protection areas in Shei-pa, each set up to safeguard rare or endangered plants and wildlife. Among them, the landlocked salmon, or Taiwan trout, is probably the best known. The Oncorhynchus masou formosanus is believed to have become freshwater-bound 1 million years ago, when the last great glacial freeze interrupted its annual migration to the sea. Although there are populations of landlocked salmon elsewhere in the world, Shei-pa's population has developed characteristics that make it unique in the world.
Wu Hsiang-chien says the ideal conservation area would not allow visitors. “But in a crowded island where people are starved for places to spend their leisure time, we must also provide recreation.”
The fish have been studied since they were discovered in 1917 by a Japanese researcher. Since then, however, habitat damage and pollution have narrowed their range from the upper tributaries of the Tachia River to a five-kilometer section of Chichiawan Stream. Wu Hsiang-chien (吳祥堅), chief of Shei-pa National Park's conservation division, estimates that there are no more than seven hundred of them left. The Council of Agriculture set up a salmon hatchery in Wuling in 1984, but inadequate manpower and funding rendered the project less than successful. The numbers of landlocked salmon have continued to decline steadily.
One scenic area has also been set aside in Shei-pa at Mt. Tahsueh and Mt. Chunghsueh, giving extra protection to the rare plant life and unique cliff formations of the area. Together, they cover 1,850 hectares, or 2.4 percent of the park. The park's three recreation areas, which allow construction of tourism facilities, cover only 69 hectares. Two hotels have already been built at Wuling Farm and there are plans for several more, as well as for restaurants, campgrounds, and a tourist service center. A park bus will service each area. The remaining third of the park is zoned, with minimal regulation, as a general protection area.
Under the park's ten-year, NT$3.2 billion (US$128 million) development plan, goals for the first five years include setting up the park headquarters and police squad, building basic facilities, developing transportation and communication systems, and establishing a research laboratory and information center. These facilities will be limited to several comers of the park, leaving most of the land undeveloped.
Fewer than forty people manage Shei-pa, six of whom are temporary employees. The staff size seems especially small when compared to that of other national parks. More than one hundred people staff Yushan National Park, and some three hundred manage Yangmingshan.
Shei-pa employees are not easy to recruit. The major reason, according to Hsiao Ching-fen, is that few qualified biologists, botanists, urban planners, or marine scientists are willing to take the difficult civil service examination, which is required to become a national park official. To ease the manpower shortage, Hsiao's department is encouraging people to volunteer for the parks. About 250 people volunteer at the other four parks each year.
Now that the park has entered its first full summer tourist season, Shei-pa officials are getting a taste of putting conservation theory into practice. “The ideal situation for conservation would be to set up national parks that allow no visitors,” says Wu Hsiang-chien of the conservation division. “But in a crowded island where people are starved for places to spend their leisure time, we must also provide recreation.”
Some conservationists believe that tourism and conservation can coexist, if people visit the park in the right mindset. 'The major problem is that many people still don't have the right concept of quality recreation and conservation.” says Lin Wen-horn (林文宏) associate researcher of the Wild Bird Society of the ROC, a private conservation group. “To help improve the situation, recreation facilities have to be carefully designed.” For example, people in Taiwan are used to driving to scenic spots even though motor vehicles can do serious harm to the natural environment. To reduce their impact on the environment, Lin suggests that parking lots be built several kilometers from scenic areas, then connected by a hiking trail.
Lin Pei-wang-"Taiwan has never had a good name in international conservation circles. We are doing something to change our bad reputation."
Shei-pa superintendent Lin Pei-wang also worries about the affect of heavy traffic, since all Taiwan recreation areas are plagued by a crush of cars and buses on weekends and holidays. Take Yangmingshan, the national park closest to Taipei. The area attracts 2.5 million visitors annually, three-fourths of whom visit during the February-to-April flower season. To ease the horrendous traffic during these months, the park started a bus system in 1989. When Yangmingshan's four hundred parking spaces are full, private cars and buses can no longer enter; visitors must either take the bus or walk.
Although Shei-pa is too far from Taipei to attract such crowds, traffic at the new park suffers from the crude road system. In fact, congestion is already gelling serious. At Wuling Farm, the only site in the park to provide hotels, restaurants, and short walking trails, now draws about ten thousand visitors a month, and traffic jams are becoming common on weekends and holidays.
The worst threat to the natural resources of the parks, according to conservationist Lin Wen-horn, is improper land use. The habitats in Yangmingshan, Taroko, and Yushan national parks have been seriously damaged by the mining operations that continued until recent years. Mining and logging also scarred sections of Shei pa, and about three hundred hectares of hillside surrounding Wuling Farm have been cleared to create farmland. While the former mining and logging areas are slowly recovering, farming continues to affect the surrounding habitat.
“Many of these activities existed before the park designations,” says Hsu Kuo-shih(徐國土), professor in the Planning Office for National Hwa-tung University and the former superintendent of Taroko National Park. Hsu explains that many of the farms now operating in Taiwan's Central Mountain Range began under a forestry administration policy to encourage people to reforest clear-cut hillsides. But farmers soon opted to grow fruits and vegetables rather than trees. The government has not forced these farmers to give up their livelihood, partly because of a lack of manpower to monitor these remote areas and partly because farming was not widely recognized as damaging to water and soil conservation until recently.
Hsu stresses that although some industry and agriculture has continued on the land, the national parks have helped to contain and control land use. “After the designation, all new farming activities or mining had to be approved by park headquarters or higher authorities such as the Ministry of the Interior,” he explains. “And existing activities are also under the supervision of park headquarters.”
Another problem facing Shei-pa, and other national parks, is that different sections of the land fall under the jurisdiction of different government entities. The forest area, for example, which makes up 90 percent of the park, is overseen by the provincial government's Forestry Administration, as well as the central government's National Park Department. Meanwhile, Wuling Farm is managed by the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Servicemen (VACRS) of the Executive Yuan.
With the establishment of the parks, a number of disagreements have arisen over which agency has ultimate authority. Adding to difficulties, some agencies do not share the national park department's conservation mission. Consider Wuling Farm, for example. Established in 1963, the residents of this farm had cultivated three hundred hectares before the park was established. The pesticides used to increase production quantities destroyed much of the habitat for endangered landlocked salmon. The National Park Department is trying to stop the use of habitat-damaging pesticides on the farm, but it has not yet reached an agreement with VACRS.
According to the National Park Department and Shei-pa's headquarters, most inter-agency disputes are negotiated and solved privately, but the process often takes a long time. Hsiao Ching-fen believes that Taiwan would benefit from adopting a system similar to that of the United States. There, when a national park is designated, any other government agencies with jurisdiction in the area are dismissed to avoid overlapping. “That would be the ideal way for national park management,” Hsiao says. “But in Taiwan, it is not likely to happen in the next few years.”
The most challenging task facing the National parks, according to superintendent Lin Pei-wang, is instilling an environmental consciousness in the minds of the general public. One of the major goals for National Park Department officials is to promote environmental education programs through public activities, school and community programs, and publications. In all of these, the primary purpose is to instill an appreciation of Taiwan's natural habitat and a dedication to conserving it. One of Lin's oft-quoted mottos is: “When visiting Shei-pa, take nothing but pictures, and leave nothing but your footprint.”
If there is any spot in Taiwan where it is possible to preserve a genuine wilderness habitat, it is in the remote mountain terrain of Shei-pa. But park official know that they must tread carefully in developing the area as a recreation site if it is to be adequately protected. “We consider the conservation of natural resources our first priority,” says Wu Hsiang-chien. “We want to maintain an environment that people will be able to enjoy generations from now. And we want them to find a lot of landlocked salmon in the nearby streams.”