Advocates protest Kaohsiung development

nature FIRST: Advocates yesterday called on the government not to ‘develop urban forests with the left hand and destroy existing forests with the right hand’

• By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter

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Tree preservation advocates yesterday rallied in front of the Presidential Office Building calling for safeguarding of the forest at Kaohsiung’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery (橋頭糖廠).

The more than 100,000 trees around the refinery could be cut down for real-estate development, after the Kaohsiung New Town third-phase development project was approved by the Ministry of the Interior’s Urban Planning Commission in July, the protesters said.

“We call on the government not to ‘develop urban forests with the left hand and destroy existing forests with the right hand,’” said Chuang Chieh-jen (莊傑任), chairman of the Forest City Association, Taiwan.

Members of tree preservation groups stage a rally in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: CNA

The project would convert the more than 150 hectares of woodland into residential land, while the surrounding 400 hectares of building land remains idle, he said.

Given that Kaohsiung’s birthrate continued to decline over the past decade, the projected demand for such massive amounts of residential buildings is also questionable, Chuang said.

He called on Lai to help redefine the refinery’s woodland as a national-level urban forest demonstration zone in line with his urban forest development initiative.

Among the protesters was 83-year-old Chiang Huang Nu (蔣黃女).

Chiang Huang registered as a Kaohsiung city councilor candidate for next month’s local elections despite her advanced age, as she sought to help attract public support for preserving the woods around the refinery.

She said she became a temporary worker at the refinery when she was 13 and worked there for many years.

Her work involved various tasks such as planting sugarcane, hoeing the weeds, and weighing or shaving sugarcane, she said.

Chiang Huang used to walk for two hours every day to travel from her home at the Wulilin (五里林) community in Ciaotou District to the refinery, she said.

“I now take a walk for more than an hour in the woods every day,” she said, adding that cutting down the trees would deprive her of the delight that the woods offer.

Chiang Yao-chian (蔣耀賢), her eldest son, who convinced her to run for election, has long been dedicated to preserving the refinery’s historical and cultural heritage.

“We are not against development... We are asking for the road to be moved southward,” he said, referring to the project’s planned 60m-wide road that would cut through the woods.

Procedural injustice existed in the National Land Management Agency’s passage of the NT$36.5 billion (US$1.15 billion) project, which threatens more than 100,000 trees, he said.