If Wild Boars are protected in Taiwan, this guy should be stopped. 1000 boars killed ? Leave the wildlife alone !
chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/loca … hunter.htm
Abos should have no special rights.
They are ROC citizens, they should have the same exact rights as any other ROC citizen.
They’re not protected, but only aboriginal people are allowed to hunt them. They’re extremely common in some parts of the country and are actually a pest. And the guy’s a professional hunter, not some weekend yahoo out for a bit of sport.
In any case, don’t forget its the China Post. All you can say for sure about that story is that it is on their website, along with a photo of a man with a pig on his back.
The bloke MIGHT be Bunun. He MIGHT live in Yanping. He MIGHT have used dogs and a knife to kill it. It MIGHT be his 1,000th. Or his 10th. Or his 100th. Or his 10,000th. You really cannot tell if you read it in the China Post. 
True. The China Post wouldve been a great tool for dis-information in the Cold War !! Its a Boar of a story 
Calling the Indigenous people of Taiwan ‘Abos’ is a bit insulting no?
Still…hunting needs to be carefully scrutinised…if one man can hunt 1000 boars?
Well, over 34 years, that’s like around 2 a month. Not what I’d call a huge living. A friend of mine bought a wild pig off an aboriginal up Wulai way just a week or two ago. Dressed, butchered, packed and ready for the freezer. Can’t remember the cost, but it was not expensive. Those fellows are surely NOT living off the fatta the land on their hunting.
oops forgot Aussies say that bout their aborigines as a racial slur. I just wanted to not type out the whole word ABORIGINE. no offense intended. Maybe we can just use AB for the purposes of this thread…
As to wild boars, I’ve taken (killed) probably 30 or 40 of them. In Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and California. Eaten most; some were too wormy for food. The ones we ate were pretty tasty.
They can be mean and smart critters in the wild and will attack if you’re in what they consider their territory.
They do a LOT of damage to the forest preserves in the Appalachian Mts. of the USA. They ‘root’ for food and destroy the habitat.
Most are hunted with “brush guns”, short (legal) rifles and large caliber pistols. It tends to be close-in hunting and can happen pretty darn quick. Repeat - they are smart, will circle and will attack rather than flee. Some of them are just plain ornery critters.
And yes, some folks do hunt them with knives. Big, usually specially made knives…heh heh heh…(ergo the term - pig sticker)
My dear boy! Showing that you people over there so richly deserve to be excluded from the British Empire. Pig-sticking is done AFTER Tiffin and BEFORE luncheon from the back of a pony. The pig-sticker is not a knife in any shape manner or formm but a lance.
BLOODY colonials! Damnation! Where’s my damn punkah wallah? I’m feeling hot and bothered now. :fume:
Huzzah!
Although, according to a google image search of pig sticking, this is how they do it in Hungary…
Back in the old days when we used to mountain bike up into the Forbidden Zone past WuLai and camp out, it was pretty common to be awakened in the middle of the night by small groups of indigenous dudes wandering through our camp, heading out to shine possums and razorbacks.
They wore head lights and sported crossbows made out of scrap metal.
And I always thought a pig sticker was a long lance too, with a perpendicular cross brace a foot and a half or so down from the point to keep the swine from, after being speared, running up the length of the haft and goring the user.
Is the wild boar indigenous to Taiwan? I don’t think you can say it is detrimental to the environment if so, on the other hand they could have an important role in the ecosystem. The aborigines have already wiped out/close to exterminated all the large mammals here and working on the little ones like flying squirrels.
Not true. Almost all large mammals (not already extinct) have made a remarkable comeback in the past ten years. There are so many deer now that martins have taken to hunting (since there are no longer any mid-sized cat predators). Taiwan’s mammal populations are doing quite well.
There are several reasons for the comeback. Better protection of land; closing of forestry roads and change in eating habits. The last two are strangely related. Seems there is no longer a taste for dried meat so hunters have to provide fresh fare which can only now be hunted close to villages because of the lack of good roads into remote areas. So while village areas may be overhunted there is still a lot of area with lots of wildlife.
Aboriginal groups have also to some degree recognized overhunting and a problem as many restrict or limit it.
As for the pigs, I see no danger of them going extinct.
I don’t know if you call about 500- 800 black bears ‘doing well’ or dolphins that are about to go extinct. Also I don’t know where the data is coming for these proclamations. Remember the Taiwan government still doesn’t recognise the cloud leopard as extinct. From my knowledge of Miaoli things are much worse now than a couple of decades ago.
I’ve no doubt that things should be getting better though in parts, there certainly is more awareness and national parks seem to be fairly well protected. Still nobody knows if the boars are indigenous or not. I’m sure limited hunting wouldn’t be a problem.
They’re indigenous. They’re found all over the Pacific, not specific to Taiwan, or maybe some kind of subspecies. They’re also of course heavily interbred with escaped domestic hogs over the centuries.
You list two species, one that is limited in number yes, though growing, and another that is a sea mammal. No one is arguing that sea mammals are doing well or that Taiwan protects its oceans very well. Plenty of people, from hikers, to guides, to aboriginal hunters, to national parks and forestry people, to professors of ecology at NTU are confirming what I am seeing with my own eyes: more land wildlife.
Not terribly concerned whether you believe me. Given the precedence of previous debates you will be repeating what I am sayng in about 2 years. 
I’ve seen similar boars in the Phillipines. If from Taiwan it is probably a subspecies or species and deserving of protection , guess it has hybridised too. Pigs are probably heavily involved in tearing up the soil, burying and transporting seeds and fertilising with their dung, creating paths through the forest, creating patches where trees can germinate…just off the top of my head.
Of course it is missing the apex predator excepting humans, the cloud leopard.
The story of sika deer is interesting, they were completely wiped out in the wild and reintroduced from domestic stock. I believe there were once vast amounts of deer living on the plains and valleys of Taiwan, due to the prevlance of deer related place names on the island.
It depends where you go, some areas will have more wildlife, other areas it’s dying out. I don’t believe a lot of government statistics but if you have independent observations from multiple points well that is a better source. I don’t think there is a good handle on Taiwan’s wildlife by the academic community here…just look at the story of the black bears or the dolphins. They seem to be very sketchy on their own island or just getting started into proper research. Estimates of bear numbers run from a few hundred to a 1000 or so. There’s not much data on what is happening out there. Let’s just say the trend should be positive overall.
As for the butterflies…I’m pretty sure there’s more to be learned (I have a background in biosciences and studied zoology and botany, I’m not completely waffling here ).
Yeah, I guess your right…lets see how the ‘spics’ and ‘japs’ feel about it.
The wild boar here are Sus scrofa taivanus, a subspecies of wild boar (the domestic pig is Sus scrofa domesticus). Domestic pigs have been raised in Taiwan for centuries, and the entire Formosan wild boar population likely has varying degrees of domestic pig genes from centuries of contact between the two populations. But wild boar roam the hills in vast numbers.
Much more endangered is the Lanyu miniature pig (Sus barbatus sumatranus). Its population has been widely mixed with other domestic pig genes. There’s a captive breeding program which has seen some degree of success.
I’ve heard talk of a reintroduction of the clouded leopard into Taiwan from populations in Burma and/or southwestern China.
Let’s just hope they do it in utter secrecy.
Just a wild guess here: the Aborigines?