• Staff writer, with CNA
  • https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2025/03/12/2003833290

Eight groups yesterday called on the government to take action on 10 animal welfare issues, including banning wild boar snares and pigeon racing at sea.

“These 10 issues largely do not require new legislation or amendments and can be addressed through administrative orders alone,” Taiwan Animal Protection Monitor Network secretary-general Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) told a news conference in Taipei.

The government’s actions have been “extremely limited,” despite years of advocacy from animal rights groups for better animal welfare policies and their enforcement, Ho said.

Animal traps are pictured in New Taipei City in an undated photograph.

Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Animal Protection and Health Inspection Office

Among the 10 key issues, the eight groups highlighted banning wild boar snares — formally known as compression spring snare traps, which tighten around an animal’s limb with great force when triggered.

Jerry Ko (柯元傑), convener of the Taiwan Animal Protection Monitor Network’s anti-metal traps group, said that the Central Election Commission (CEC) rejected the group’s proposal last year for a referendum on a complete ban on wild boar snares, citing concerns that it would affect the hunting rights of indigenous people and the needs of farmers in preventing crop damage caused by wild animals.

“The wild boar snare is a hunting tool that was introduced from Japan in the past decade… It is not a traditional hunting tool that indigenous people have used for thousands of years,” Ko said.

There are alternatives for preventing crop damage, citing the use of electric fences in Japan, Ko said, adding that the fences are a “humane way to coexist with wildlife.”

Showing images of animals severely injured by wild boar snares, he said that despite authorities promoting an improved snare over the past five years, the number of protected species killed has not decreased.

Six Formosan black bears and five leopard cats have died after being ensared in such devices, Ko said.

Taiwan Bird Rescue Association member Mars Chen (陳彥騰) said that the CEC also rejected a proposal for a referendum to ban pigeon racing at sea.

Chen called the commission’s reasoning “evasive” and “unconvincing.”

The CEC rejected the proposal in part because of its claim that “the true intent of the proposal cannot be understood from the content,” as stipulated in the Referendum Act (公民投票法).

“Amid decades of neglect by administrative agencies, millions — perhaps tens of millions — of racing pigeons have perished at sea,” Chen said, adding that pigeon racing on the high seas has a survival rate of just 1 to 2 percent.

The groups also called for action on eight other issues, including bolstered regulations covering animal performances, ending chaining and caging of dogs, and regulating the breeding and sale of pets other than dogs and cats.

Greg Hilburn

Shreveport Times

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• Louisiana will expand its black bear hunting season in 2025, increasing the number of permits and opening two new hunting areas.
• The decision comes after a successful inaugural hunt in 2024, where 10 bears were harvested in Management Area 4.
• The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries attributes the expansion to the success of the state’s black bear recovery program.
• Louisiana’s black bear population, once near extinction, has rebounded to an estimated 1,500 bears today.

Louisiana is set to expand its second black bear hunting season in two generations with 26 total permits to be granted and two more areas open to hunters in 2025.

Last year’s inaugural hunt in December 2025 was exclusively in the Management Area 4 with 10 bears harvested.

The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission voted March 6 to both expand the number of permits issued by lottery in December 2025 and to include Management Area 1 (Coastal, eight permits) and Management Area 2 (Pointe Coupee, 3 permits) for hunting. Fifteen permits will be issued for Management Area 4 (northeastern Louisiana).

The season would begin on Dec. 6, 2025, and run through Dec. 21, 2025.

All successful applicants for the hunt will be required to attend a LDWF bear hunter training course. To see the complete Notice of Intent from the commission, go to https://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/resources/category/commission-action-items.

Last year’s hunt yielded perhaps the largest black in Louisiana when Deron Santiny of Lafayette landed the 696-pound male bear in Tensas Parish.

Louisiana’s black bear population all but disappeared in the 1950s and 1960s, but has recovered to include about 1,500 today and was removed from the Endangered Species List in 2016.

Louisiana’s fabled black bear became part of American culture in 1902 after President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot one that had been trapped and tied to a tree by members of his hunting party.

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The episode was featured in a cartoon in The Washington Post, sparking the idea for a Brooklyn candy store owner to create the “Teddy” bear.

Today black bears roam the deep woods of the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge, Upper Atchafalaya Basin and other connecting corridors such as Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The bear’s Louisiana recovery was celebrated in 2015 during an event at the Governor’s Mansion that Theodore Roosevelt IV attended and the following year during a ceremony at the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge that then U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewel attended.

“I like to think this is partially a result of one of the greatest hunting stories in American history,” Roosevelt told USA Today Network in 2015.