Seeing his film almost completed, in re-sponse to outside praise Liu Yen-ming says mildly that in fact his being able to film the mountain hawk-eagle was not his own achievement--the most crucial thing was that an enterprise was willing to provide funding. "Taiwan has so many wild animals that need recording and studying, but without money, all such ideas are just empty talk," he says.

Liu has been making nature documentaries for almost 20 years, and although journeying into the mountain forests is hard work, the most wearisome aspect is running about trying to raise funds. He says that in theory the government should allocate budgets and shoulder its responsibility for recording and conserving wildlife. But making a documentary film on any individual species takes at least three or four years, and government budgeting and tendering procedures make it very difficult to secure funding over such a length of time. Thus he had had no choice but to seek corporate sponsorship.

However, although it is an established practice for companies in Taiwan to sponsor charity organizations, the ones chosen are mostly focused on disadvantaged groups and cultural and artistic endeavors, while the field of nature and the environment has attracted little support. "That's probably because wildlife cannot speak out for itself!" says Liu with frustration. For more than ten years his filming projects were all funded by the Taiwan Cement Corporation. It was not until his project with the mountain hawk-eagle that Sean Chuang, president of the Leofoo group, which itself has a wildlife park, sought Liu out after seeing a TV report on him and hearing that he was about to have to give up his work for lack of funding.

This kind of opportunity can only be described as "good luck." "It is very challenging for us to find businesses willing to fund us, because we don't have access to their senior management." In fact, this is not only a headache for Liu Yen-ming, but is a problem shared by many nature conservation and environmental protection groups. An example is the Kuantu Nature Park, run by the Taipei City Wild Bird Society. Bird lovers have been running it by their best efforts for 20 years, but in recent times, with the successive threats of SARS and bird flu, the number of visitors has slumped, and the park has accumulated losses of several million NT dollars. The society cannot bear such losses long-term, but has been unable to find a corporate sponsor. Its general secretary Shih Jui-te recently said that he feared that the Kuantu Plain, an important wild bird habitat that the government had purchased for NT$20 billion, might have to be sold off to a conglomerate, and its fate was uncertain.

With corporate sponsors unwilling to "invest" in nature conservation, couldn't we follow the business model used overseas for nature documentaries?

Liu Yen-ming says that TV stations such as NHK of Japan and the BBC of the UK that produce large numbers of high-quality nature programs market their work globally. They invest heavily, but their market is large enough for them to recoup their investment through royalties for broadcast rights and film copyrights. Most importantly, in terms of both skills and reputation these long-established enterprises have an enormous lead. Taiwan has got into the race very late so it is difficult to catch up with them.

Liu is extremely grateful for the confidence and support given him by Leofoo. Even during the SARS crisis, when Leofoo Village Theme Park's business hit rock bottom, they continued to make regular payments and never suggested they should end their cooperation. "Taiwan has many admirable people," he says, including many friends and academics who give him their silent support. This is what gives him the strength to carry on.