With the number of endangered species continually rising and only limited human resources and abilities, which species should be saved first and what actions will bring the best results?

The list of protected animal species in the ROC contains more than 1900 different species and is 33 pages long. But if you take a closer look, you will find that domestic species account for less than one-tenth of the list, scattered as they are among the lemurs, seals, kangaroos, pandas and other internationally protected species.

The vast majority of protected species, both foreign and domestic, are on the list as a necessary response to the international attention given to the smuggling of wildlife products.

In Taiwan, eyes on the world

But since it is our list of protected species, does it contain all the local species that ought to be protected? In fact, mammals and birds occupy two-thirds of the list, and amphibians and reptiles make up almost all of the rest. The same ratios hold for foreign and domestic species.

Although invertebrate species are far more numerous than vertebrates in nature, only 50 make the list (23 arthropods such as the tumblebug and the Papilio xuthus, and 27 mollusks, all foreign pearl producers). As for fish, which are vertebrates, only 16 species both foreign and domestic are included on the list. Species that are absent include all of the numerous varieties of snails in Taiwan, the various kinds of edible animal species that are being endangered by over-fishing and over-culling along the coasts, and even Taiwan's endemic ruanchih moth (Neopseustis meyricki), which has a history of more than 100 million years.

Wildlife protection regulations prohibit the hunting, trading, or breeding of protected species. Breaking the law is a criminal offense punishable by a jail term of six months to five years. Yet while the Wildlife Conservation Law does prohibit people from killing unlisted animals by means of electrocution, poison or explosives, violators are punished only with fines, and there are no restrictions on catching beetles, moths, butterflies or mollusks.

What's more important is that making the list brings higher visibility, so that besides eliciting more public concern, a listed species is more likely to be the target of a research grant or conservation plan. Hence, many researchers of moths and invertebrates criticize the list, believing that it has been determined by a group of experts from only a small number of fields, and that there is no way for it to show the entire range of Taiwan species nearing extinction.

All for the species' sake

Yang Ping-shih, who participated in making the list, admits that it has flaws: "There is a lack of scientific statistics about the populations and distributions of domestic species, and so the scholars who wrote the list naturally drew on their past experiences and consultations." Yet for the many species that have been the subject of little or no research, no one knows how their numbers are holding up, and no one is pleading their case.

But there are also practical considerations that explain why the invertebrates and fish comprise such a small part of the list. It would have been asking too much to list all of the species needing protection. A simple definition of "species" is "a group of animals that can mate with each other." Ever since modern biology came up with its system for dividing the animal kingdom, because species of birds, mammals and other large vertebrate are few, and the distinctions between them are clear, a single species' absence garners great concern, while one's discovery engenders great excitement. And so people have quickly latched onto the species as a unit for protection efforts.

But where there are numerous species, new ones are forever being found. And things can get very tricky: sometimes experts have yet to figure out if animals are of the same or different species. Take mollusks. Because they frequently interbreed, marked differences in appearances result, which makes them difficult to classify. It's even more complicated with the numerous species of insects. Often a new species is discovered which is thought to be rare and hence placed on the endangered species list. Later, after much research, it is discovered that early investigations were incomplete and in fact the species is thriving. Hence, putting a species on the protected list requires a clear purpose, such as to prevent dealers from taking too many butterflies.

Salt-water fish and mollusks are the species that humans take from the wild in the greatest numbers, and it is particularly hard to protect species that have long been used by man. It was even difficult to convince Chinese to agree to a ban on trading rhino horns (which were only used in Chinese medicine), and attempts to do so were regarded as an assault on national culture. Hence, while pollution of the seas and unrestricted fishing endangers many marine species, protecting fish and mollusks requires prudent assessments.

Look at the three freshwater mollusks, two that live in rivers and one in mangrove swamps, that have been gradually disappearing in Taiwan over the last two decades. In light of the current situation, Wu Wen-lung, secretary general of the ROC Mollusks Research Society, once called for the Council of Agriculture to consider protecting several mollusks. The council responded by saying "to wait and see," and one of the reasons given was that it would be difficult to convince fishermen of the need to protect these species.

List the ones that can be used!

During a meeting of the Wildlife Conservation Consulting Committee, the botanist Chen Yu-feng once suggested that they turn the process around, listing the animals that could be used and protecting all the remaining ones. His reason: as regards the world of nature "there's much more we don't understand than we do understand." Chen stresses that since people accumulate knowledge about animals at a far slower pace than environmental destruction and species disappearance, then wouldn't a ban on all but certain listed species more fit the circumstances?

Although Chen's suggestion would be hard to implement, it does make obvious that the whole business of making protected species lists should be open to periodic questioning and challenges.

Paul Perng, a senior researcher of the Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute (TESRI), who was recently employed by the Council of Agriculture to help write the Wildlife Conservation Law, knows clearly that not all endangered species will get on the protected animals list. The government units charged with protecting species are weak, their funding limited, and their enforcement abilities lacking, and so the lists must put priority on those species facing pressures from hunting and international illegal trade in their parts: "They have the practical need of resolving pressing problems in society first." And so species that have not yet become greedily coveted by man are not for the moment candidates for the protected list. This is why the only mollusks on the list are pearl-producers.

This "let's just make do" attitude has appeared because the Council of Agriculture finds it difficult to cope with even the current list of protected species and feels worn out from dealing with so many problems at the same time. Animals are spread throughout the island, yet many county and city governments lack any formal wildlife preservation unit, with perhaps only one person responsible for all wildlife protection efforts. Or maybe this work is given to already existing units as a secondary responsibility--and treated accordingly. Coordination between central and local authorities is weak, and so it was the Council of Agriculture, rather than local officials, that broke the recent Yunlin dolphin meat case.

The incompleteness of the list isn't actually a big problem, says entomologist Yang Ping-shih, for the list can always be amended. "But what is the effect of a species being listed? And does listing one cause the price of its parts to rise [and thus encourage black-market trading]?" In his view, the law needs to be enforced to be of any use. "Just putting an animal on the list won't save it from extinction."

Umbrella protection

With time pressing and resources limited, many species can't wait for people to gain knowledge about them before actions are taken on their behalf. People have to do something now. And so, "Practical considerations are the main reason large species are selected for protection," says Wang Ying, a professor of biology at Taiwan Normal University.

On the food chain, every species is equally important, and none self-supporting. The myriad beasts are all caught up in a tangled web of interdependence, and it is hard to resolve the problems of a single species.

For example, in protecting carnivores at the top of the food chain, such as the clouded leopard, first you've got to provide sufficient food, and so you must protect such species as the rock monkey and the muntjac. And that means that you've got to protect the arthropods and plants that the omnivorous rock monkey and muntjac eat. One link in the chain connects to another, so many species spread through the entire ecology get protection in the name of the large animal.

Protected large animals are like "wildlife umbrellas." They require a big space in which to "unfold." Many of the animals that live near them fall under their shady protection. Although the stated purpose of protection may only be to protect a large animal, it ends up achieving the same ends as the "species diversity" being preached by conservationists today.

K survival strategy crisis

In recent years in particular, species have been declining mainly as a result of encroaching human development. The panda, the focus of world attention, may have difficulties getting pregnant and generally weak propagation abilities, and its powers of adaption may have declined and its population aged; but man, by threatening the bamboo forests and destroying its natural habitat so that it has less space to forage, is even more the cause of its demise.

The Formosan landlocked salmon, regarded as a national treasure, lives only in the upper stretches of the Tachia River, where the temperature is low and water quality high. But the expansion of high-mountain agriculture has damaged the water and the soil, and pesticides are seeping into the river. This is the main reason why the species has been listed as endangered.

In the 1960s ecologists outlined two strategies used by animals adapting to the environment: the K strategy and the R strategy.

The R strategy is for species living in environments that often change. Their best bet for survival is to focus all efforts on propagation--the more offspring the better--so that at least some of those descendants will be able to survive future disasters. But if a species is in a stable environment where its population is already close to the environment's carrying capacity, then following the R strategy would produce a lot of weird offspring that had poor adaptability and would surely be defeated by stronger species anyway. In such circumstances it is better to propagate less, following the K strategy.

It would seem then that large animal species are experts at K survival tactics, whereas smaller species--insects and rodents, for instance--follow the R strategy, stealing a living at the feet of the larger animals. In truth there are also invertebrate species that select the K strategy of survival. In the great extinction of species being orchestrated by humanity, they are the life forms that suffer first.

The dazixia butterfly (Sasakia charonda formosana) that is listed as an endangered species reproduces only once a year. On top of this, the species has a very limited range. "To drive them to extinction," writes Yang Ping-shih in a report, "We needn't catch all of them; their population groups just have to get small enough so that inbreeding results in the gradual weakening of the species."

Even for beetles, butterflies, land snails, and other invertebrates that adopt the R strategy for survival, though men have long been culling such species, clear regulations are far off, and this has led to today's situation of "most species being on the decline," says Wu Wen-lung, quickly reciting a long list of mollusks whose numbers have been greatly reduced over a short period of time as a result of overculling.

Take the hongshuxian (Geloina coaxans) a shellfish so large that you can't cover it with one hand. Buckets of them used to be a common sight in harbor markets. Last year Wu came across one specimen while carrying out a study of Taiwan's West Coast ocean resources with the TESRI. He hadn't seen one previously for more than a decade.

No flowers without mud

Today people have come to understand that they can't stress some species and neglect others. Hence, for those species in steep decline that can have an effect on large animal species, or those species that in the past were ignored, or those animals that simply can not be included in plans to protect animals by reducing hunting, wildlife protection efforts eventually "will have to move toward protection of habitat," asserts Li Ling-ling, an associate professor of zoology at National Taiwan University.

For example, the problem of water pollution has not been solved. And though there are public announcements about protecting freshwater mollusks, they will never be as plentiful as they once were, when you could clean your laundry in the river and find the makings of lunch at the same time. The national treasure fish, the Formosan landlocked salmon, is the best example of how efforts to save a species fail when they are not matched by efforts to save its entire environment. Because Tachia River water quality is deteriorating, research and administrative government units have thrown more than NT$100 million into artificial propagation, but the species is still on the decline.

Hence, conservation groups have recently made calls to "preserve the wetlands." Besides wanting catchment areas for reservoirs that bring humans precious, life-giving water, conservationists also hope that preserving wetlands will save the precious mangrove forests from being cleared and allow Taiwan's single endemic species of tidal crab to survive. By preserving wetlands, the hongshuxian that Wu Wen-lung wants to protect, the fish fry that fishermen rely on, and the migratory birds that feed on shrimp and crabs can all thrive.

Paul Perng says it used to be thought that clear targets were needed to bring about ecological protection, and so preservation areas were created for specific animals, such as the clouded leopard or panda. But in the future nature reserves won't be devoted to a single rare species but rather will be aimed at protecting the greatest diversity of ecology. Even areas that appear to contain nothing special but are nonetheless ecologically important will require protection.

Nature preserves are also a way of protecting natural resources not yet understood. The World Conservation Union, which specializes in compiling lists of protected species, also keeps a list of conservation areas. A government can have an area listed without even knowing what "treasures" it contains.

What a wonderful world

Taiwan's wildlife protection efforts have borne their fruit in the island's wildlife preserves. Take, for instance, the Mikado pheasant, which in 1984 was the ROC's first target of ecological preservation. It was previously thought that the Patungkuan Old Trail area of Jade Mountain would be the animal's final home, but today its tracks can be found throughout many nature preserves in Taiwan. Wu Hai-yin has researched the Formosan rock monkey for many years and says its numbers in ROC national parks are also increasing.

Cheng Hsi-chi, an assistant researcher at TESRI, explains that TESRI has recorded a new species, the alpine whiskered bat, in the Juiyuan Nature Preserve of Taichung. The discovery is certainly closely linked to the Taiwan Forest Bureau declaring the area a protected zone and restricting access.

With humanity's tentacles extending so fast, only a certain percentage of land can be kept forever in its pristine natural condition. In particular, nature preserves and national parks find themselves besieged by demands for development. The southern cross-island highway, for instance, will cut Pingtung's Tawu Nature Reserve in half. Even National Parks bear development scars that just seem to grow larger and larger.

Paul Perng argues that the protected areas won't need to be vast, but each must reflect special features of the Taiwan ecology. Take, for instance, the park for migratory birds in Taipei City. In January of this year, plans for it finally passed the city council. Though the move was lamentably late and as a result much more money had to be spent acquiring the farmland than originally would have been necessary, the park still serves as a model to show that nature reserves needn't only be found in remote mountain regions.

No secret to success

In Taiwan the Forestry Bureau, the national parks and the Council of Agriculture all make strong public announcements about protecting the ecology, but problems still abound. Administrators often lack real power. Coordination can be difficult with so many different units. And although the national parks are run by professionals, one of their functions is to provide destinations for recreational travel, which runs at cross purposes with ecological preservation. Nature reserves, on the other hand, often simply have their name on a signboard with no one there to oversee them at all. Like the protected species lists put out by the government, they are plagued by an embarrassing lack of administration and enforcement.

Shao Kwang-tsao, a research fellow at the Institute of Zoology in the Academia Sinica, notes that Taiwan has 11 fishing preserves to protect its fishing resources. Yet there is a lack of clear regulations governing methods of fishing, nets and tackle, and local fisherman associations have yet to grasp the necessity of maintaining fishing resources for eternity. The preserves might as well not exist.

It seems that the key to success in ecological conservation doesn't lie in choosing the best method, but rather simply in getting people to understand the importance of sustainable use as it applies to animal species, and then, once people understand, in getting them to do something about it.

At the start of the year, the Council of Agriculture made a nature preserve out of three small islands off the coast of Keelung that are the only spots in northern Taiwan where sea birds propagate. The photo shows Huapingyu, on e of the three islands. The island is covered with volcanic sand that ha s a high content of iron, which has oxidized. It makes the island look like it is being bathed in the red light of a sunset. （courtesy of the Keelung Bird Society）