JHIH HAN LYU: So we see the pangolins here and we have the

crab-eating mongoose.

JESSE EDBROOKE: That's the sound of a Taiwan eagle.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Taiwan is an island in the South China Sea

and it is one of the most high-tech places on Earth. It's

also connected with each of our lives.

Hsinchu City is like the Silicon Valley of Taiwan and is not far

from the capital Taipei. Rows of factories and foundries produce

90% of the most advanced chips in the world that power

everything from the phones in our hand, the computers on our

desks, smart speakers, even the satellites orbiting above us.

But in such a futuristic landscape, what does it take to

look after wildlife that is fighting for its place and

survival?

I'm Ranger Rosie Holdsworth. For this episode, podcast producer

Jesse Edbrooke travels to the forest in Taiwan on the trail of

some incredible wildlife.

Welcome to Wild Tales in Nature Valley, Taiwan.

Jesse has taken the 40-minute high-speed rail journey from

Taipei in the north to Hsinchu, a bustling high-tech city.

He's here to meet Han, who is helping to care for a former

plantation that's been placed in a trust to help protect wildlife

for the Nature Valley Environmental Charity Trust,

Taiwan.

JHIH HAN LYU: I think the weather is so nice. So it's like

summer day.

JESSE EDBROOKE: It's so beautiful. So we're driving into

the mountains. Lots of amazing different types of trees. These

banana trees?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah, banana trees.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Wow, okay.

JHIH HAN LYU: It's really different from England, right?

JESSE EDBROOKE: It is, yeah, absolutely.

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah, you can see the bamboos here. It's called

Gui zhu.

JESSE EDBROOKE: So that's a special type of bamboo, is it?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah. And you can eat it.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Oh, can you?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah, in the spring. I will have the younger

one. Yeah, and you can cut and eat it.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Can you eat it fresh or do you have to cook it?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah, you have to cook it.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Ok.

JHIH HAN LYU: And it's a kind of traditional dish in Hakka

culture.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Yeah, it's interesting.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: In Taiwan, people talk about food in a

similar way to British people talking about the weather.

There's always a delicious local speciality dish in each town or

city. Bubble tea, xiao long bao and beef noodles are some famous

dishes that are now easy to find in many places around the world.

JESSE EDBROOKE: So this is beautiful.

JHIH HAN LYU: This is also a Hakka house. And we are in Chong

Lin district.

JESSE EDBROOKE: So we're surrounded on all sides by

the... The forest...

JHIH HAN LYU: Yes.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: This 1.8 hectare area of forest has been

many things. In the 1970s, the slopes were planted with tea

trees. Later, it was bought by a business and the slopes were

populated with several different kinds of orange tree. And then,

in 2011, the owner of the land donated it to Trust In Nature

Foundation Taiwan, the very first environmental charitable

trust in Taiwan.

JESSE EDBROOKE: And so we've got these wooden tables. It's set

up, it's almost like for a picnic, with people coming to

have a picnic here.

JHIH HAN LYU: It's kind of open to the public, so we will do

some education activities here.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: For the local haka community, it was important

that their identity was celebrated. Han, the section

chief of the Environmental Trust Centre, explains more.

JHIH HAN LYU: There are more than 500 species living here. So

the first time I knew about this, I was... Wow, it's

amazing. I didn't expect there would be so many species around

me.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Part of the success of the project was

engaging with the local haka community, and Nature Valley

involved local children in conservation and appreciating

the rare indigenous wildlife. What was once an abandoned farm

was becoming something else entirely.

A place where the past, the rhythms of farming, began to

meet a new future where land was valued not for what it produced

but for the life it sheltered. There are 25 protected species

that can be found in the forest.

JHIH HAN LYU: So we see the pangolins here.

JESSE EDBROOKE: So they're very rare, aren't they, pangolins?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Pangolins are shy, nocturnal mammals with

armoured scales and... Powerful digging skills. They're a

keystone species with a critical role in controlling

biodiversity. They're adept at climbing trees and usually eat

20,000 ants and termites every day with a long, sticky tongue.

Taiwan has successfully helped pangolin numbers to recover

significantly.

JHIH HAN LYU: And we have the crab-eating mongoose here.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Wow. So how big do they grow to and what do they

look like?

JHIH HAN LYU: I think like this...

JESSE EDBROOKE: They're quite big.

JHIH HAN LYU: Maybe one meter.

JESSE EDBROOKE: One metre?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah, including the long tail.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The crab-eating mongoose is a stocky

predator with a coarse grey coat and a distinctive pale stripe

along its side. It moves with cat-like grace. True to its

name, it prowls the edges of rivers and ponds, prying under

rocks and roots for crabs, frogs, snails and the occasional

fish.

Unlike many of its relatives, this mongoose is comfortable in

water, swimming and diving with ease. The numbers in Taiwan are

growing as they live in this protected habitat.

JHIH HAN LYU: Many years ago, the people in the village, they

don't see this animal often. So it's changing. We are curious

about this.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: As Jesse moved through the forest to the top of

the incline, he was treated to the sound of an iconic bird

soaring above the trees.

JHIH HAN LYU: The sound of eagles.

JESSE EDBROOKE: So that's the sound of a Taiwan eagle.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The eagles are crested serpent eagles which

soar above the mountaintops in Taiwan. They mainly hunt snakes

and lizards, although they'll eat mammals and small frogs too.

And there was also danger from one of the starkly black and

yellow insects.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Oh look, there's a really big spider. Hey look,

my kids will be so scared.

JHIH HAN LYU: The poisonous spider.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Yes, it's the poisonous spider. I'm gonna tell

them.

JHIH HAN LYU: But it won't kill you.

JESSE EDBROOKE: That's what I heard. Every spider in Taiwan is

poisonous. They just don't kill you.

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah. I mean the spider won't... They don't want

to bite you. They only want the food.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Yeah, yeah. And those spiders, they can grow

quite big, can't they?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah. They will be... Go like... It's like my

hand.

JESSE EDBROOKE: It can get as big as your hand?

JHIH HAN LYU: Yeah, the female one. Wow. The female one is

bigger than the male.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The giant wood spider is the largest spider in

Taiwan and also one of the most common, with golden hairs on its

back. If a human is bitten, the venom can cause symptoms such as

nausea and vomiting. It's not life-threatening. The silk the

spiders weave is so strong it can be made into spider silk

clothes.

Looking after Nature Valley is no mean feat and the team are

always busy.

JESSE EDBROOKE: So tell me what kinds of responsibilities you

have in looking after the land?

JHIH HAN LYU: We need to maintain this habitat because we

need to protect the forest like this. It's a low elevation

forest.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Han explained why she gave up a promising

career in law to work in the charity sector, caring for the

forest.

JESSE EDBROOKE: What was it like the first day when you stopped

working in law in an office and walked into the jungle?

JHIH HAN LYU: Oh, I feel like I get some freedom because I like

walking in the mountains or doing some hiking. To me, it

keeps me that I can feel I'm alive. It's not sitting in a

building all day long. I feel happy when I do this job. Yeah.

Sometimes I will talk with the visitors. They will give me some

really good feedback. I think it's a meaningful part of my

job.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Yeah, so what kind of feedback will they give

you?

JHIH HAN LYU: They see the special things in a common

place. They can build connection with this land.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Building connection with nature helps

enthuse locals and protect the land. But there are also

individuals helping to keep the Hakka culture alive. Not far

from the Nature Valley in Chong Lin is a studio where sounds are

being created to further this mission.

Jesse spent time chatting with a three times platinum and

multi-gold melody winning artist who's written, produced and

performed music all over Asia.

His music's been streamed hundreds of millions of times

and his latest album was recorded powered only by solar

energy. He's also of Hakka origin.

JESSE EDBROOKE: We're here in the studio and please can you

introduce yourself?

WING LO : Yeah, hello everyone. My name is Wing. Welcome to my

house.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Great.

WING LO : Yeah.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Can you please say a little bit about your

music?

JOSHUA EDBROOKE: Wayne was explaining that he used to write

predominantly in Mandarin Chinese until around about 10

years ago he discovered that the Hakka language in Taiwan was on

the demise. And there were less and less people who were

speaking Hakka.

And actually, if this trend continues, the Hakka language

would die out in Taiwan. And Wing, whose mother tongue is

Hakka, decided that actually music is one of the best tools

of language preservation. And so he started to write pop songs in

Hakka.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Wing's songs have now become part of a new

wave of pop culture celebrating the Hakka identity. He explained

what characterises this Hakka sense of identity.

JOSHUA EDBROOKE: The Chinese word in Mandarin to describe the

Hakka people, Ke Jiaren. The Ke, it represents a guest or someone

who is from another place. And that slightly represents the

ancestors of the Hakka people in Taiwan who have come from

elsewhere. They've come from other lands and settled in

Taiwan.

And when you emigrate in that sense, you have to start from

nothing. So then in music and cultural terms, then you also

have traditional songs that have come out of that sense of

building up a life from zero. So Wing mentioned the Shan ge, like

the mountain songs of the Hakka people, and other kind of

traditional folk music.

But what Wing's doing is taking those elements of the language

and the culture, but putting them into pop music, pop videos,

even the live concerts that he's doing, to make it accessible.

Put that identity in, but to kind of let identity evolve so

that it can remain.

JESSE EDBROOKE: Thank you so much, Wing. Yeah, I really

appreciate it.

WING LO : My pleasure. Great.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Returning to Nature Valley. As with any

charity, fundraising is key. In order to keep looking after the

wildlife and employing staff, the charity has to raise funds.

JESSE EDBROOKE: This afternoon, you're going to the high-speed

rail station. Yeah. What are you going to do there?

JHIH HAN LYU: Well, we will go to the car park to receive our

donation box. When you buy some food in a convenience store, you

will get a kind of receipt. And the receipt, you can check the

numbers. If the number is correct, you will get money.

Yeah, it's like 200 Taiwanese dollars or 10 million. Biggest

one. Okay. Yeah, 10 million.

JESSE EDBROOKE: That's an amazing way of supporting you.

So everything you buy from a bottle of water, some sweets,

you can just get the receipt, pop it in the box, and then it's

a chance that you might win the lottery. Yeah, yeah. And pay the

tax.

JHIH HAN LYU: And buy the trail camera.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And how about plans for the future?

JHIH HAN LYU: Or once. We can get more and more trust land. So

we can show what we do here to the public that environmental

trust, it can be successful. Yes. It can protect nature

forever.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And with that, it was time to thank Han and her

team and get back on the Taiwan high-speed rail from Hsinchu to

Taipei.

Today, Nature Valley is more than 1.8 hectares of land. It's

a bridge between technology and tradition, between endangered

species and everyday life, between the Hakka past and

Taiwan's future.

And so, on the edge of the world's most advanced technology

hub, pangolins dig their burrows, children are enthused

about conservation, and an old Hakka house welcomes new

stories. In this small valley, the wild and the human find a

way to harmonise together.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Wild Tales. If you

liked it, why not give us a like or a follow? Don't forget your

National Trust membership also offers you access to Nature

Valley Environmental Trust as it's part of the International

National Trust's organisation.

We'll be back soon with another episode in a couple of weeks.

But if you can't wait that long, why not check out our other

nature podcast, Nature Fix. Or if you like your history too,

there's Back When. I'll see you next time.