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Updated Friday, June 13, 2008 0:00 am TWN, The China Post news staff

COA under fire for issuing 96 coral exploitation licenses

Fish swim above bleached corals on a reef of the southern Great Barrier Reef in this January 2002 photo. Global climate change may push the Great Barrier Reef and other coral ...

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COA under fire for issuing 96 coral exploitation licenses

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Environment conservation and protection groups and experts yesterday blasted the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA) for issuing as many as 96 coral exploitation licenses to fishing boats, running counter to the ongoing international coral conservation trend.

Professor Chen Chao-lun at the Academia Sinica, who has been engaged in the research of coral ecology in the Taiwan sea area, said angrily that the COA has apparently bowed to the pressure from local coral and jewelry associations and elected people’s representatives.

“This year is an international coral year and as many as 150 countries have signed pacts to protect coral resources. But Taiwan has run counter to the trend, and will therefore be censured by international environment protection and conservation groups,” Chen said.

Chen continued that the COA has done a bad job, in that it has allowed those illegal coral exploiters to become legal by granting them coral fishing licenses.

This is really a big step backward in the government efforts on protecting coral reefs and on ocean ecology conservation, according to Chen.

In response, Hu Hsing-hua, vice chairman of the COA, said the COA will no longer issue similar licenses, and will invite scholars and experts to work out measures to dampen coral exploitation by the private sectors. “We hope that local coral exploiters will gradually close their operations within one year,” Hu said.

Hu continued that coral fishing is not an easy and sustainable job, and some operators of fishing boats may be willing to drop out of the market in the coming year as a result of profitless operations.

Meanwhile, Shieh Da-wen, director general of the Fisheries Agency under the COA, said that any of the 96 fishing boat licensed to undertake coral exploitation will see their licenses revoked if they are found exploiting coral resources in the deep-sea areas.

When asked by reporters about whether local coral and jewelry associations have interfered in to pressure the COA to issue licenses, Shieh said that the associations have expressed their support for legalizing coral exploitation operation, so that member firms can easily get the certificates of origin for coral products they have reaped to facilitate their exports to foreign countries.

COA’s Hu also stressed that his council will step up monitoring coral exploitation operations by those licensed fishing boats, lest they should engage in illegal operations.

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