Taiwan Church News
3102 Edition
August 8-14, 2011
Headline News
Alangyi Trail spared in the nick of time – for now
Reported by Lin Yi-ying
Written by Lydia Ma
Though the plight to preserve Alangyi Trail, an 8km long ancient trail in Pingtung County and Taiwan’s last remaining untouched coastline, ended on a sad note on July 24, 2011, a glimmer of hope emerged when Pingtung County extended Alangyi’s “Temporary Natural Reserve” status to January 31, 2012 in early August. This extension will at least keep the trail intact for a few more months.
Taiwan Church News previously reported that, though 52,000 individuals and 828 organizations signed a petition that would have preserved Alangyi and turned it into a permanent national nature reserve, at least 100,000 petitions were needed before the end of the day to validate this petition.
Pingtung Environmental Protection Alliance CEO Hong Hui-hsiang said he was extremely grateful to Pingtung County for wanting to preserve this trail. He added that one urgent task at hand is to include some 200 private plots of land near Alangyi into protected area to reinforce the preservation of this Alangyi. He agreed with the county’s view that nurturing and transforming this area into a tourist attraction about biodiversity would create a win-win situation for both the local economy and the local environment.
Hong’s greatest fear is that in view of Pingtung County’s tight budget, it might not be able to afford expropriating these lands. Hence, he hopes that the county would at least include and designate these plots of land as part of Alangyi’s “Temporary Natural Reserve”.
Alangyi is an ancient trail established in the 1870s for indigenous tribes to travel along the coast and is Taiwan’s last remaining natural coastline. But for some time, the Ministry of Transportation (MOT) has been wanting to finish a highway network traversing the southern and eastern coasts of Taiwan. This highway known as Provincial Highway 26 – and dubbed “Nuclear Wastes Expressway” because of two nuclear disposal plants built nearby in eastern Taiwan – has so far been stalled because of a temporary natural reserve designation.
