Conservation of Biodiversity in Taiwan

Introduction Taiwan is geographically situating in 120°-122° E and 21°-25° N and located 130 km off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The Tropic of Cancer passes through Chia-Yi of central Taiwan. Thus, the island belongs to subtropical and tropical climate regions. The total area of Taiwan is 36,000 km2, including Taiwan island proper, the Penghu islets (the Pescadores), Green islet and Orchid islet about one-tenth of Yuan-nan Province of China. About two-third of the Island is occupied by mountains with more than 200 peaks above 3000 m in elevation. There are about 58% area covered by forests, including hardwood forests, coniferous forests, grassland and mangrove forest. Because of great variation of topography from sea level to 3950 m in elevation the climate and habitat changes, leading to luxuriant growth of vegetation and tremendous diversity of species, showing over 4200 species of vascular plants. Of them, 25% of species are endemic, in addition, 5700 fungi species and 19,000 animal species, result in great biodiversity (Table 1). Nevertheless, because of the rapid growth of population and fast development of industry, the number of species has been seriously reduced and some species become endangered or extinct that also happened to the other parts of the world. Raven (personal communication, 2000) pointed out that over the past 50 years with the addition of about 3.5 billion people, has more than doubled to reach over 6 billion, causing the loss of a quarter of total available top soil, the loss of one-fifth of agricultural land, and the destruction of one-third of forests. Human have driven the rate of biodiversity extinction about 1000 species per year due to the anthropogenic activities of social economic development. To prevent the loss of genetic, species and ecosystem diversity, the movement of natural conservation in Taiwan was initial in 1980 leaded by the senior author and members of botanical society and environmental specialists. The movement called national attention and government of Taiwan to realize the importance of natural conservancy by establishing the Environmental Protection Acts and institution, such as Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute, COA. Nature Conservation in Taiwan during Japan Colonization Period (1845-1945) Taiwan was administrated by Japan government for 50 years (1895-1945). During the period, the policy of natural conservation was paid little attention. Instead, the agricultural and forestry development went fast based on the colonization policy of Japanese administration. For example, tremendous deforestation happened to the Central mountains in particular to the Alishan where a vast area of coniferous forest, such as Chamaecyparis, spp and Cinnamomum camphor, was cut. Simultaneously, the deforested land was replanted by the species, but the rate of deforestation was faster than that of replanting. On the other hand, several Japanese botanists came to Taiwan and made extensive inventory of plant species by Hayata, Kudo, Sasaki, Masamune, Yamomoto, Sato, etc. (Huang 1993; Huang et al. 2002). Basically, the fundamental botanical flora of Taiwan was started by Japanese botanists. A great number of plant vouchers were deposited in herbaria of the Tokyo University, Kyoto University and Taihoku Imperial University (now called National Taiwan University; Chen 1995). In addition, several zoologists particularly entomologists had also paid attention to species collection by inventory, which vouchers were also deposited in the museums of the aforementioned universities. Truly, the aforementioned investigation was the fundamental biodiversity research in Taiwan. Although biodiversity conservation was not particularly emphasized during the period of Japanese time, some important monuments for plants or vegetations were recognized and established that became the basis of several national parks established later ( 1984).