While Taiwan was busy creating an economic miracle, it was also ruining its ecological miracle. The outlook for life in the island's streams and rivers is grim, and the damage can probably never be repaired.
Once upon a time in Taiwan, angling on a holiday afternoon was not just a privilege confined to dwellers in the country side. Many middle-aged Taipei denizens can remember the days when they could take a short walk to the then-inviting banks of Hsintien Creek, which divides the city from Yungho, Taipei County. Families often went there to spend the afternoon together--fathers and grandfathers would concentrate on fishing while mothers helped the children catch small crabs or shrimp under the mossy stones. Then, after the sun went down, the family would go home with a quality catch for the dinner table.
Some of those who fished the rivers when they were children still love the hobby, but in order to do it today they need to take the family a considerable distance. There are no longer any fish in the creek their fathers knew so well, and in order to find water with a chance of some wildlife and the absence of a foul smell it is necessary to travel a considerable distance upstream. The joke these days is that if someone wanted to kill themselves by jumping into the Hsintien Creek, the ghastly stench would do the person in before they hit the water.
It is more than obvious what has caused the death of the part of this creek that runs through the southern area of Taipei --pollution. Taiwan has completed only about 5 percent of its sewer system, so wastewater from households, factories, and agriculture all runs freely into the island's streams. "Rivers are like arteries that send energy and nutrition to parts of the island, and sewage systems should act like veins that flush out waste," says James Wang, a professor at National Taiwan Normal University's Graduate Institute of Environmental Education. "The problem is that when there aren't enough veins, people use arteries to dump just about everything."
One might think the government would have seen the pollution problem coming and corrected it years ago, but its powers remain weak. Currently, Taiwan's highest-level officials working on marine habitats number about a dozen in the conservation section of the Council of Agriculture's (COA) Forestry Department. And how often do members of the section get to meet with the head of the council? Not too often. In the all-too-frequent cases where conservation runs slap up against economic development, the section chief barely ever has a chance to talk to, say, the Minister of Economic Affairs.
The problem is not confined to the central administration. Most local governments have from none to half of a staffer to handle conservation issues, and this person usually has his or her hands full. "People ask if there's a balance between conser vation and economic development," says Lin Yao-sung, a professor at National Taiwan University's (NTU) Department of Zoology and president of the Society of Streams, a non-profit organization that toils to protect rivers. "Look at the govern ment manpower allotted for conservation compared to that overseeing economic development, and you'll get the answer."
There are laws against dumping toxins in rivers, but they seem more effective as an income generator for the government than a true deterrent. The Water Pollution Control Act, 1991, states that violators can face a fine of NT$3,000 (US$97) to NT$600,000 (US$19,355), along with up to seven years in prison and the revocation of factory licenses. Last year, the government collected over NT$200 million (US$6.5 million) in fines. According to the Ministry of Justice, twenty-three people were given from two to twelve months in jail in the first half of 1999 for polluting waterways. Wang adds that even though the government has promulgated water pollution control laws, they neglect more sensitive species that are vulnerable to changes in water temperature caused by industrial waste.
Pollutants and lack of government coordination and muscle are just some of the many enemies of Taiwan's freshwater habitats. Sand farms are another major problem. In order to "harvest" sand, the stream needs to be blocked alongside one bank. When that happens, species that live at the bottom of the river die as the water filters away. "Sometimes we'll find a place that's ideal for a field survey, but then it disappears as soon as the water is dammed," says Lee Teh-wang, an assistant researcher at the Division of Zoology, Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute (TESRI). "When the route of a river changes, so do the flow and the balance of life around it."
Life for fish is all but impossible in the lower reaches of Taiwan's rivers near urban centers, and is getting tougher in the upper waters as well. The main blame attaches to filters that keep sand from flowing into reservoirs, and the cultivation of forests and slopelands.
Lin estimates that there are between 5,000 to 6,000 sand-filtering dams in the upper stretches of Taiwan's 3,800 kilometers of rivers. These help retard the silting up of Taiwan's forty reservoirs, but they also interfere with the migration of fish and other freshwater species. "What the sand dams do is equivalent to making sausage links," Wang says. "The ecosystem of a river is chopped up into independent sections." Fish are trapped in a pool, after which constant inbreeding reduces the genetic diversity of the species, rendering it fragile. The slightest additional change in its environment can be enough to wipe it out.
The clearance of nearby forests for agricultural and recreational purposes also has a bad effect on river systems. Forests assist with soil and water conservation, but if they are cleared in favor of commercial fruit trees and golf courses, the advan tages soon disappear. In 1994, the government passed the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, which stipulates that evaluations need to be conducted before work can begin on construction projects likely to have an adverse impact on the environment. But even with that protection, conservationists seem to be losing most of the forest clearance battles.
"Any development project is bound to have a negative impact on the environment," says NTU's Lin Yao-sung. "But in practice, whenever people have to choose between commercial interests and the lives of fish, it's the latter that have to go." TESRI's Lee confirms this, pointing out that while major construction projects such as reservoirs and highways require environmental evaluations, smaller projects do not, despite the fact that they often contribute to destruction, too.
A natural disaster can sometimes intensify the damage to rivers, as happened when the September 21 earthquake hit Taiwan. The earthquake itself was a natural phenomenon that most fish could cope with, but what they could not handle was people dumping rocks and mud, the detritus left by road blockages, into rivers. "The roads were cleared, but the 'roads' for fish were blocked," Wang says. "It was just another case of people using rivers as a convenient dumping ground."
According to the COA, these "dumping grounds" are home to 177 kinds of freshwater fish in Taiwan, though researchers have found that many recorded species have become extinct. Two aquatic animals that are barely hanging on, the Formosan landlocked salmon and Varicorhinus alticorpus , a minnow of the Cyprinidae family, are listed under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Law as rare and valuable. The Wildlife Conservation Law added another four freshwater fish to the list: the swamp eel; Hemimyzon taitungensis and Sinogastromyzon puliensis , two types of loaches; and the paradise fish.
Not much attention was paid to the livelihood of fish here until the mid-1980s. Wang believes that people's conservation awareness usually increases more slowly than environmental consciousness, because pollution usually has a faster and more direct effect on them. Compared to the conservation efforts lavished on oceans and land areas, freshwater species hardly get a look in. When Taiwan actually started to care about the state of its freshwater fish, they were already in serious trouble. Lin's own résumé reflects this history. After receiving a doctorate from Cornell University, he returned to Taiwan in 1975, only to find himself in an awkward situation. "I'd earned Taiwan's first Ph.D. on freshwater fish, but it turned out that my first research project was on oyster culture," he says. "No agency or institute would fund research on so-called non-economic species. In fact, no one at that time really gave a damn about fish in Taiwan's streams and rivers."
It was not until 1985 that Lin finally had an opportunity to do what he had set his heart on: a research project on the landlocked salmon funded by the COA. Also known as the Taiwan trout, this species is one of the world's rarest fish and a relic of the Glacial age. The following years saw the COA and later the Shei-Pa National Park continue to fund research projects on the species, and two subsequent televised documentaries on the fish brought it islandwide attention. "Academi cally, the landlocked salmon has been the focus of Taiwan's freshwater fish researchers," Lin says. "But what's even more important is going beyond academic studies and directing the average person's attention to life in our rivers and streams."
Unfortunately, however, this turned out to be one of those cases where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Wang recalls the naiveté of certain religious and conservation groups that released a variety of creatures into streams to repopulate them, apparently on the basis of "the more the merrier." "The result is that in just one river we have turtles from Brazil, shrimp from America, tilapia from Africa, ornamental carp from Japan, and various other fish from all over the world," he says. "The original ecosystem of a river like that is no longer there, because we've turned it into the United Nations."
Despite these mistakes, there have been a few bright patches, perhaps the best of them in Sanmin township, Kaohsiung County. This township is located near the upper reaches of Nantzuhsien Creek, home to about ten of Taiwan's freshwater fish, two of them rare and endangered. Poor transportation to the area deterred visitors for many years, but road improvements in 1983 attracted, in short order, tourists, pollution, and fishermen armed with poison, electric prods, and other illegal means of catching fish. Before long, the fish there were in a parlous state.
Fortunately, the townspeople decided that they did not want the fish to die out and, moreover, that they were prepared to do something about it. So in 1990 they organized a team to seal the creek and prevent people from fishing in it. Their efforts eventually gained government support and, three years later, the area was designated by the Kaohsiung County government as Taiwan's first refuge for freshwater fish. Angling is only permitted from November through June, and the size and species of catches are regulated.
Following the Nantzuhsien Creek model, two other areas were later designated reserves for freshwater fish. Chichiawan Creek, home to the landlocked salmon, was made a refuge by the Taichung County government in 1997, and Hsinwulu Creek, which houses three more endangered or rare species, was designated a refuge by the Taitung County government in 1998.
While rising environmental awareness and more reserves are obviously a good thing, researchers wonder if Taiwan's streams have deteriorated past the point of no return. A 1999 survey showed that there were only some 500 landlocked salmon left, about the same number as when the COA started to fund research into it fifteen years ago. "Researchers go out there and note the crises, but that's it," Lin says. "We have neither the power nor the means to fix anything."
Unhappily, such feelings of helplessness are not just gut reactions. They have a scientific basis. From an academic point of view, all conservation, preservation, and restoration starts with the establishment of an ecological database. Taiwan does not have one. TESRI has been trying to develop a comprehensive database since 1992, and its researchers have already documented the rivers of Nantou County, where the institution has its headquarters. Now they are looking at other parts of the island, but since it takes nearly a year to survey a single county, Taiwan cannot realistically expect to have a proper ecological database for approximately fifteen years. "By the time they've finished the last river, the report on the first river will be fifteen years old," Lin says. "The population of a species can change for many reasons and in a short space of time, so a survey that's over a decade old may not be very helpful."
What makes things worse is that unless TESRI or some other environmental institution can find the money and the manpower to establish and then update this database, the island will never be able to restore its rivers and streams, not even partially. The complex process of creating a complete database begins with research into a single animal, expands to a group of species, then branches out to cover related species and finally the entire ecosystem. Today, most researchers are still at the stage of focusing on single animals.
In fact, as Lin points out, approximately 90 percent of the money and manpower allocated to the study of freshwater species has been channeled into research on the landlocked salmon. "You've got to start with making bicycles, then move on to motorcycles, cars, planes, and space shuttles," he says. "Currently, our knowledge of freshwater fish is still at the bicycle or motorcycle level, so we have a long way to go before we reach the space shuttle."
Is there anything Taiwan can do to ensure that future generations will once again be able to take their children to rivers and creeks around Taipei on Sunday afternoons? Lin's answer paints the island's waterways as patients in the final stages of cancer. "You can prolong the agony with drugs, but you can't really cure it," he says. "Death is only a matter of time." Well, miracles do sometimes happen, and cancer patients have been known to make full recoveries. But it is precisely this kind of miracle that Taiwan will need to save the unique habitats in and around its waterways.