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Asharq Al-Awsat
17-02-2025
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Taiwan Bounty Hunters Kill Invading Iguanas as Numbers Soar
Armed with a slingshot, Taiwanese bounty hunter Wu Cheng-hua bends sideways and aims his lethal weapon up at a green iguana, one of tens of thousands in the crosshairs of a government cull. Taiwan's iguana population has exploded since the spikey-backed giant lizards were introduced from Central and South America more than 20 years ago as exotic pets. Many escaped, or were dumped, and have bred rapidly in the warm climate of the island's south, invading neighborhoods and ravaging farmers' crops, Agence France Press reported. After Wu finishes his shift at a breakfast eatery, he joins a group of hunters hired by the Pingtung County government, which pays up to NT$500 (US$15) per iguana. "Sometimes we've been lucky and caught 300 iguanas in a day," Wu, 25, told AFP. "Sometimes we were not so lucky and caught two, three or a dozen." Carrying harpoon slingshots used for spearfishing and wearing rubber boots, the hunters crane their necks as they scan the thick forest for iguanas, which live in the canopy. There are more misses than hits as the men fire their stainless steel darts at the prehistoric-looking creatures high up in the trees and shielded by leaves and branches. AFP journalists watch as an iguana plunges several meters to the ground and runs for its life. Another is shot multiple times before it is pulled out of the tree still alive. The men bind the legs of the captured iguanas to stop them escaping and leave them on the ground as they carry on hunting. Taiwan began culling iguanas nearly 10 years ago and this year's target has been set at more than 100,000. Experts and government officials say the effort is unlikely to eradicate the reptiles. Some estimates put Taiwan's green iguana population at 200,000. A female iguana breeds once a year, laying dozens of eggs at a time. "Climate anomalies" have fueled iguana numbers in recent years, said Chen Tien-hsi, a wildlife expert at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology. A lack of seasonal rain and unusually warm winters have increased hatching and survival rates of the young, which Chen said had created "a perfect storm for explosive population growth". Pingtung County has ramped up its iguana cull from a few hundred a year in the beginning to 48,000 last year, Agriculture Department director-general Cheng Yung-yu said. But Cheng said more effective "removal strategies" were needed. "Despite significant manpower and resources being spent on their removal annually, their population continues to grow almost exponentially," he said. Local farmer Cheng Hui-jung has watched iguanas decimate her family's red bean crop, even after they installed fishing nets to protect their fields from the herbivores. The iguanas live in the dense bamboo growing between her land and a river, and come down during the day to feast on the red bean shoots. "They move very fast and we couldn't catch them," Cheng told AFP, who worries some farmers will resort to cutting down the trees or give up planting crops altogether. Regular people are being encouraged to get involved in the iguana cull. Hsin Tseng-kuan said she was scared the first time she encountered an iguana on her farm and resolved to learn how to catch them. "They're not even afraid of people," said Hsin, 58, one of more than 80 people taking part in a government training session where they are shown how to use a snare pole to lasso a soft toy iguana. "When we first saw one, we were the ones who were scared," Hsin told AFP. "It really looked like a small dinosaur." Animal rights group PETA has urged Taiwan to find "non-lethal strategies" for controlling its iguana population or, if culling was deemed necessary, to "minimize suffering" of the creatures. Several hunters told AFP they would be able to kill more efficiently and humanely if they were allowed to use air guns, the use of which is tightly controlled in Taiwan. Wu and his colleagues end their hunt in the early evening after catching 14 iguanas in three hours. The reptiles -- some of them alive and bloodied -- are laid on the ground before being tossed into a plastic box. Hunters are required to euthanize the iguanas and keep them in a freezer until they can be incinerated by the government. While hunting was physically harder than his cooking job, Wu said he liked helping farmers protect their crops. "Otherwise, everything they grow will be eaten up," Wu said. "It is very sad to see them like this."
BBC News
30-01-2025
- Health
- BBC News
January 2020: The scanners used to stop Covid's deadly spread
In January 2020, Thai authorities were amongst the first to have to grapple with a worrying new disease. The frontlines included the country's shopping malls. In January 2020, a new strain of pneumonia that has been worrying Chinese scientists and doctors suddenly becomes a global problem. On 13 January, Thailand reports the first case of this new respiratory illness outside China: a 61-year-old resident of the Chinese city of Wuhan who had arrived in Thailand five days before. Slowly, the number of cases reported in Thailand increases. Within a week, other Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea report cases. Within three weeks, the number of cases rises to the point that the disease became a "public health emergency of international concern" according to the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020. It will become much, much worse. The gradual spread of the disease starts to attract the attention of the world's media. In Bangkok, Mladen Antonov, a Bulgarian photographer who works for the agency Agence France Press (AFP), starts to cover the steadily increasing reaction to the disease. "Thailand took very early measures," Antonov tells the BBC from his home in Hong Kong in late 2024. "Southeast Asia has a big trauma from previous pandemics, the Sars and all these. So they are very, very cautious about all this." Antonov says the Thai authorities quickly install body heat monitors in places such as shopping malls. Businesses within the malls, he says, usually pay for the equipment to be installed. The monitors pick up any abnormally high body temperatures, and anyone found to have a fever is reported to the authorities. "I think it's the 27th of January [when this happens], or something like that. This is just the beginning," says Antonov. "Our job, as journalists for the wire, we had to provide daily [images] of how the world reacts. So I was walking around, going to different places, searching for images to show masks. That was actually what first we start doing, showing pictures with people with masks," he says. Antonov then walks into a shopping mall, and sees the body heat scanner in operation. "It's not easy to work in commercial properties like this, like in shopping malls, you need special permission," he says. "So it was not easy to take the photo. But of course, I didn't ask. I just went and I start shooting them." Antonov has to move behind the thermal camera, which is being operated by two guards, and take a picture of the screen without them noticing. "It was a challenging time, as you can imagine, for a photographer, because we had to go to hospitals. We had to be outside when people were really afraid, you know, for any contact you had to go out and even go and push, to go closer," says Antonov. Thailand is one country that does not adopt the strictest lockdown procedures in early 2020. The thermal cameras soon became a common sight, Antonov says, as people travelled to work or to shop. "They introduced such thermal cameras to every metro station and to bigger shops. They were also using these 'gun thermometers', pointing the guns to your head and measuring the temperature. "We in the wire business, we cover wars, we cover tragedies, we cover hurricanes, we cover typhoons, we cover earthquakes, things like this," says Antonov. "So this was just another one challenge; yes, very different than anything else that we did previously, but still something were you have to find a way to do it and to be inventive, because it's very repetitive… masks, masks, masks, masks," he says. Around six weeks after the image is taken, Antonov starts to grasp just how serious the situation is. "We were reporting every day from… 200 offices around the world, so we had from everywhere information, we start counting cases, deaths and things like this." The invisible virus is a very different challenge to the normal threats war photographers face. "Is it deadly? What does it mean to catch it?" says Antonov, describing the uncertainty at the time. "Because when somebody is shooting next to you, yeah, you know, there are bullets that can hit you, but this is something that you don't see it. You don't know [immediately] when you catch it," he says. "We were washing our hands. We were using this spray disinfectants. Every one of us had small bottles in their pockets… every day, when you go back, you had to disinfect your camera," says Antonov. "There was, of course, a kind of a lockdown, but it was not so draconian [in Thailand compared to elsewhere]," Antonov says. "There are a lot of people from the countryside who work in the hospitality industry in Bangkok, for example. So when the rumour came of the lockdown, they [the government] gave them couple of days [to prepare to leave]. People took their leave, they left their jobs and they went back home to their villages." As the fear of the pandemic rises and the normally bustling shops start to quieten, Antonov sees what he calls "the most haunting image" of the early pandemic. "Grocery stores remained open all the time, and in big shopping malls, there are big supermarkets, and in order to reach the supermarket that is on the seventh floor, you have to pass through the escalators. They were making pathways in the shopping mall where you can go and all the stands, all the displays were covered in clothes," he says. More like this:• How Covid-19 myths travelled the world• 2021: The year of the mask• Can a civilisation feel 'mass trauma'? Most of the lights in the shopping mall have been turned off, making the mall feel like the setting for an apocalyptic movie. "It was like… you know when humanity is just on the brink of disappearance, you walk alone in total silence in an enormous shopping mall, take the elevators, and you're alone, and everything is grey, nearly dark. You know, it's unbelievable, so surreal… this happened within a week after this image [of the thermal scanner]… we couldn't imagine that really colourful and bustling shopping mall could really be dehumanised in a week. Just now I have goose bumps when I remember all these images walking with my wife, going to buy groceries from the shop." Before he leaves Bangkok for Hong Kong, Antonov visits some of Bangkok's usually busy tourist spots to experience their rapid emptying. They are usually filled with visitors watching professional Thai dancers. "You pay them, and they dance to please the gods. They were dancing with masks, with shields," he says. "Even after I left Bangkok, I continued to do namaste," Antonov says, describing the traditional bowing gesture performed by Buddhists when greeting people. "Bangkok, they do namaste, they don't shake hands. It's a good way not to transmit any germs. But for many years after I stopped hugging. Before, we were hugging with people… I'm working for a French company. and, you know, in France, people love to kiss each other. "When the pandemic left and when everything stopped, I was continuing to kind of feel awkward when I have to shake hands. "Now, after five years, I could say, yeah, the dark memories fade somehow, and it stays more a curiosity." --
