The proposal is noteworthy because it would encompass aboriginal villages.
To the present day, national parks in Taiwan have used Yellowstone National
Park as their model and prohibited local indigenous residents from living
within them.^88 They also disallow customary aboriginal activities and cultural
practices, such as hunting and gathering. The result has been to separate
aboriginal culture from the aboriginal lands located in national parks. (About
90 percent of the land area of Taiwan’s six national parks was originally the
territory of aborigines.)
The proposed site is also the original location of stands of cypress trees.
During the colonial era, firms began to cut the cypress trees to meet increasing
demand in Japan for building materials. Logging cypress trees increased in the
post-war era. In the late 1980s, conservationists launched a forest protection
movement to curb deforestation of mountainous areas, and in 1989 a
moratorium took effect, by which time many aborigines had been forced to
relocate.^89 By the late 1990s, conservationists and aboriginal people demanded
the establishment of a national park to save ancient forests in the cloud zone
of Chilan Mountain area (about 1200–2000 meters in elevation) of northern
Taiwan.^90
The COA responded by designating a ‘Yuanyanghu Natural Reserve’ within
the Chilan Mountain area as a protective area for the cypress forest, and in
2000 it was upgraded to the Chilan Important Wildlife Habitat. However, the
administrative agency responsible for the Chilan area was the Forest
Protection Department of VACRS^91 , and it continued to take cypress trees from
the forest. The VACRS officials contended that workers cut down only dead
trees and cleared logs on the forest floor of the old-growth forest for the health
and regeneration of the forest. Scientific researchers and forestry experts in
universities and the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute verified these claims,
yet environmental activists and ecologists disagreed. They insisted that the
cypress forest did not require human intervention and that logging activity
would damage the old-growth forest. They also argued that VACRS logged
dead trees for its own profit (drawn by the high market price of Taiwan
cypress), and that no forest agency monitored VACRS logging activities.
Moreover, activists (including ecologists) emphasized the importance of brush
and logs in a healthy forest ecosystem, for the role they play in nutrition
cycling and as a habitat for diverse animals and plants.^92
Environmentalists were suspicious of the three government agencies
administering policy in the Chilan region. They argued that the Forest Bureau,
the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, and VACRS, had a pro-development
bias and were not protecting the area. For this reason, they sought to have the
area classified as a national park, because under the National Park Law of
1972, land-use provisions are somewhat more strict and none of the three
suspected agencies had regulatory authority. In early 2000, it was the national
126 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan