- ‘We want tourists to buy local goods in order to improve the local
economy, and - We want the local producers to improve the quality of the goods they
sell, so that they can charge higher prices and make more money. The
administration office coordinates the tours.’ (Annually the reserve
experiences 10000 tourist days.)
The administration of the reserve has taken a cautious approach to the
implementation of species protection laws and rules. Initially, local residents
felled trees for building materials and firewood. After a few were arrested for
illegal timber cutting, the incidence declined, but there is still resistance. The
taking of protected species is a continuing, but somewhat reduced problem:
‘We still have legal responsibilities to enforce the laws. Now, only a minority of
people violate the rules. There are still hunters, and those who despoil the
environment. We take hunted products as specimens, when we catch those who are
hunting illegally. We show the local people what happened to the culprits. The local
people turn the poachers in. This is especially the case for birds; the local people
don’t kill them anymore.
(Number of violations in recent years?) The record over the last 20 years shows
that there are fewer violations now. For hunting violations, the sentence is seven
years, but for trading illegal products (poaching) there’s a life sentence. We’ve
never had any death sentences for poaching. We do have tigers in the reserve. Some
species of tigers are used in traditional Chinese medicine. We regulate this very
strictly.
(How is regulation done?) We have our own monitors, and there are forestry
police. About 50 cases a year, more or less, are sent to the local court. The cases go
from the forestry police to the procurate at the court. In our office we have 10
forestry police. They do work on the violations while we manage things. We collect
information on the violations, but we don’t capture or prosecute the offenders.
That’s the job of the forestry police.’In addition to regulation, the reserve management has an active environmental
education program for local residents. A recent campaign objective is to
reduce littering inside the reserve boundaries and to keep the protected area
clean.
The orientation of the reserve management has become more encouraging
of local participation; managers strive to curb adverse reactions of ethnic
minorities to the Han Chinese. The 15 minority nationalities share a traditional
orientation to the use of the resources in the protected area, which the manage-
ment acknowledges and hopes to revise through increased environmental
education, such as teaching methods of species preservation to collectives, and
by encouraging local residents to grow their own plants for eating and use in
medicines instead of picking and gathering endangered plant species. The
director suggested that management had changed its philosophy: ‘We are
120 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan