Taiwan Today

Late one afternoon in December 2011, dozens of bird watchers descended on Tianliaoyang wetland near the coast of Gongliao District in New Taipei City, northeastern Taiwan. They had rushed from different corners of Taiwan to point their cameras at a guest few expected to see in broad daylight—a grass owl. “It’s the greatest surprise this year,” one bird photographer wrote on his blog. He was there along with about 100 other birders, many of whom anticipated receiving speeding tickets in the mail at some later date, for an owl that stayed less than four hours before flying off. Located at a bend of the Shuangxi River near where it meets the Pacific Ocean, Tianliaoyang wetland provides an ideal resting spot for migratory birds on their journey through East Asia. Among the hundreds of migratory or native bird species reported there, many, such as the grass owl, are rarely seen anywhere else in Taiwan.

Owls are named “cat-head hawks” in Mandarin and “dark-light birds” in Taiwanese. Of the more than 200 owl species or subspecies worldwide, 12 live in or regularly pass through Taiwan and its outlying islands, while “stray” owls of several other types are also seen from time to time. The Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA) lists the 12 types of owls as protected under the Wildlife Conservation Act, a determination made by the council’s Wildlife Conservation Advisory Committee, which includes experts from academia, conservation groups and aboriginal communities. The COA’s three ranks of protection are the top-level “endangered,” second-level “rare” and lowest-level “warranting conservation” designations. Currently, the native grass owl is the only owl among 10 bird species in Taiwan listed as endangered. The other 11 owl species are considered rare, even the collared scops owl, the most common owl seen in Taiwan. In total, the list recognizes 41 endangered and 123 rare animal species in Taiwan, as well as 48 others warranting protection.

As predators of the highest level in the ecological system, diurnal and nocturnal birds of prey like owls are usually considered “flagship species” or significant environmental indicators, according to Lucia Liu Severinghaus (劉小如), a retired research fellow of the Biodiversity Research Center at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s foremost research institution. Liu is a longtime researcher of elegant scops owls, also called Orchid Island scops owls after their chief habitat on the islet to the southeast of Taiwan. “If we can’t have a comprehensive survey of all levels of an ecosystem, studying the top predators can help us grasp the condition of that system,” Liu says. She heads the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan (RRGT), which was established in 1994 in Taipei to promote the study and conservation of the species. The RRGT has organized an islandwide symposium on raptors in Taiwan every five years since 1995. The latest meeting, which took place in November 2010 at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, was jointly organized by the school’s Department of Life Science, the Kenting National Park Headquarters in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County and the COA’s Endemic Species Research Institute in central Nantou County.

Tseng Yi-shuo (曾翌碩), an owl researcher, explains that the position of the birds high up in the food chain means that their presence or absence in a particular locale “directly reflects a good or bad environment.” Tseng heads the promotion and education unit of the Taichung Wildlife Conservation Group, (previously known as the Wild Bird Rescue Institute of Taichung County). He graduated from the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) in southern Taiwan in 2005. Tseng specializes in the study of grass owls, the only local owl species from the barn owl family, all the others being from the typical owl family. “In contrast to most other kinds of owl, the grass owl looks quite different, lives in plains areas, has long legs and runs fast,” says Tseng, a co-author of Owls of Taiwan published in 2010 by the Taichung group. His teacher at NPUST, Sun Yuan-hsun (孫元勳), is an expert on tawny fish owls, Taiwan’s largest owl species with a body length of around 60 centimeters, in contrast with about 15 centimeters for collared pigmy owls, the smallest owl seen locally.

Night Elves

The studies Sun and Liu have conducted on tawny fish owls and elegant scops owls respectively since the 1980s have given researchers and conservationists a greater level of understanding of the two species than of other owls in Taiwan. Perhaps due to this greater depth of knowledge, tawny fish owls have been “downgraded” from endangered to rare status on the COA’s wildlife list, although knowing more about a species does not necessarily correspond to its successful conservation, Tseng says. On Orchid Island, there are around 800 to 1,000 elegant scops owls according to Owl to Get Started: The First Survey, a popular introduction to owl-watching. Published in 2011 by the COA’s Forestry Bureau and edited by the Taipei-based Greenland Ecology Conservation Association of the ROC, the book is based on the results of the association’s previous surveys sponsored by the Forestry Bureau. In August this year, the book became one of the winners at the 2012 National Publication Awards, an event organized by the Ministry of Culture to recognize government publications. “Owls are night elves and symbols of luck. They attract nature-loving people who wish to explore their mystery,” writes co-author Xiu Hong-ru (修鴻儒) in the book’s preface. In the mythology of the Bunun people, for example, encountering a hooting owl at night is considered a sign that there will be a pregnancy in the neighborhood, with the particular vocalization believed to indicate the sex of the child.

Being active mostly at night, owls pose greater challenges than diurnal species for researchers, as it means more time or staff are required to complete a survey. Taiwan’s rough terrain and dense vegetation, while providing the creatures with a relatively undisturbed habitat, cause additional difficulties. Field researchers track the birds by following radio signals sent from small transmitters attached to released owls or by looking out for the pellets of undigested fur and bones of prey animals that owls spit out after eating. Tseng points out that in recent years there have been fewer longer-term projects aimed at a single species of owl, partly because the government’s budget now stretches across an increasing number of wildlife research programs. As a result, Taiwan has a relatively “fragmented” knowledge of the various kinds of owls, Liu says. “We still have a long way to go to collect sufficient data to really understand the population size, relationship with habitat or behaviors of different kinds of owl,” she says. For example, Liu says she has no idea about the status of larger-sized owls in high-altitude regions. “Larger owls, with their greater habitat range, tend to be more sparsely distributed,” Liu explains. “The population size of such owls had certainly been affected by earlier extensive logging in old-growth forests, but how it has been affected and to what degree are unclear.” As for local species of owls that are relatively common, Liu notes that it is hard to judge whether their numbers have increased or decreased due to the lack of historical data.

The promulgation of the Wildlife Conservation Act in 1989 and the government ban on logging in all natural forests in 1992, together with the establishment of protected areas such as national parks and nature reserves around the country, have been beneficial to the conservation of Taiwan’s wildlife, including owls. “The control of hunting is effective as can be seen, at the very least, in the disappearance of formerly common owl specimens for sale in recreational parks,” Liu says. “And protection of all sorts of forest is fundamental as larger owls need older or bigger trees for shelter.”

Still, increasing human exploitation of the natural environment continues to harm wildlife habitats. A planned housing development at Tianliaoyang wetland, for example, has generated concern among local communities and environmentalists. Tseng points to activities such as slope development, farming in temperate-zone regions and flood control efforts in rivers. “Illegal hunting is still a problem, and is sometimes done just for fun,” he says. “And sometimes owls are caught in the nets placed for other birds such as racing pigeons.” Moreover, Liu points out that poisons in the food chain accumulate in top-level predators like owls. “Unfortunately, various poisons can be found in Taiwan’s mountains and plains,” she says. “Scientific assessments should be made to see if the rat and cockroach-poisoning programs that have been carried out for a long time should be continued or not, and people must be told how the overuse of pesticides will not significantly increase agricultural harvests, but will damage ecosystems and human health.”

Protecting Habitats

Liu continues collecting and analyzing data on elegant scops owls and publishes her results each year. The RRGT also records owl sightings and other observations, many of which are made by group members in their local neighborhoods. “Such observations and investigation must be done at nighttime and require a long time [to collect enough data],” Liu says. She and Tseng suggest that more subsidies should be directed to long-term research programs, which cannot be completed in one or two years. Significantly, the two researchers call for comprehensive environmental management including the conservation of entire habitats or ecosystems. “More often than not, protected areas were officially marked out, but there were no further conservation efforts,” Tseng says. The Taichung Wildlife Conservation Group works with communities, schools and farmers to install wooden boxes in trees for owls to nest and raise their owlets in. The boxes are a practical alternative for the birds given that fewer trees these days mean fewer tree hollows available for them to nest in. At the same time, such support symbolizes people’s willingness to live in harmony with the natural world, Tseng says. “Wildlife like owls are a way for us to explore and build a connection with nature,” the owl researcher says, emphasizing the calmness and keen sense of awareness he feels during his field trips at night. “In the end, it’s a way to explore ourselves.”

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw