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.