Protection of Endangered Species

The Cultural Heritage Conservation Act prohibits the hunting, fishing, collecting, logging, or other forms of destruction of designated rare and valuable animals and plants. Since 1982, twenty-three species of fauna and eleven species of flora have been put on the rare and valuable list. Many of these plants and animals are endemic to Taiwan and include the Formosan black bear, mikado pheasant, Taiwan pleione and Taiwan Amentotaxus.One of the most interesting of Taiwan's rare species is the land-locked salmon or Taiwan trout (Oncorhynchus masou formosanum). Originally in several upper tributaries of the Tachia River, habitat damage and pollution have narrowed its range to only a five kilometer section of a single mountain stream. It is, like the Formosan salamander, a glacial relic surviving in the cool, higher elevations and represents the World's southernmost distribution of the trout (Salmonidas) family. Recent funding efforts have gone into the protection and study of this rare fish.