Protecting the Cui Valley ecosystem, safeguarding green mountains and clear waters for our children

Editor's note: Brother Liao Jinshan moved from Pingtung to Meinong with his father's generation. He once worked full-time for the Pingtung Wild Bird Society and is now a director of the Purple Butterfly Ecological Conservation Association, actively assisting the Maolin community with purple butterfly ecological restoration and interpretive work. For many years he has conducted butterfly surveys in the Yellow Butterfly Cui Valley and actively promoted butterfly larval host plants and nectar plant cultivation in the Meinong community, creating butterfly ecological corridors. Last year he began returning to his old home in Huangwutang to tidy it up and create a butterfly happy farm.

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I still remember when I was small, in the early 72nd year of the Republic of China (1983), when the Zhong Lihe Memorial Hall was completed, I first set foot on this land of the Yellow Butterfly Cui Valley, and I fell in love with this green expanse full of fluttering "yangyezai" butterflies. "I just remember there were lots of trees, lots of birds, and lots of butterflies - it was beautiful!" Brother Jinshan recalls with a smile, sitting in the backyard of his old home in Huangwutang.

Could not take part in the anti-reservoir movement But from now on, let me take good care of you

More than 20 years ago, the Meinong Reservoir construction project was approved by the Executive Yuan. From that year on, the anti-reservoir protest movement began to surge through this quiet, simple Hakka town. At the time Brother Jinshan was away but his heart was with his hometown, and he only knew that Meinong locals were divided into two camps, for and against, and he lamented that he could not take part.

More than 10 years later, after the reservoir issue gradually faded, Brother Jinshan returned to his hometown and began birdwatching in the Cui Valley with friends from the Pingtung Bird Society, and got to know Teacher Liu Xiaoshen of the Kaohsiung Bird Society. Most people associate Brother Jinshan directly with purple butterfly conservation, but it turns out he was once a birdwatching enthusiast just like Teacher Xiaoshen! "After watching birds for a long time, you also learn to watch butterflies."

Today's Brother Jinshan, besides often going into the mountains to do butterfly surveys and sharing butterfly conservation topics at various schools, is also working hard to turn his old home into a "butterfly happy farm"! He hopes that around the Cui Valley there can also be some butterfly habitat creation, so that the "yangyezai" butterflies flying out of the Cui Valley can also have places to stop, feed and rest on the vast Meinong Plain. "A place suitable for butterflies to live is also suitable for humans to live, isn't it?"

Threats and pressures facing the Cui Valley ecosystem

But Brother Jinshan also mentioned that over these 10-plus years, as human disturbance in the Cui Valley has increased, it has also had a considerable impact on the ecology. The widening of mountain paths and the accompanying vehicle traffic have affected the habitat of animals and plants, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides from farmland cultivation flow along the streams through the places the "xirenzai" like to swim. In earlier years, large numbers of chickens were once raised upstream; although that chicken coop was washed away in the year of Typhoon Morakot, the horrifying sight of chicken carcasses strewn all over the upper reaches of the Shuangxi still lingers in Brother Jinshan's memory.

Brother Jinshan, who has long cared about the Yellow Butterfly Cui Valley, is also troubled by mountain and flood control projects that casually cost 3 or 5 million. Farming deep in the mountains is no longer the era when people had to "live off the mountain," and if the farm roads are washed out and impassable by floods, one should not insist on fighting the water for land - just leave it be. The comings and goings of large construction vehicles and gravel trucks cause great disturbance to the environment, and many small lives are crushed beneath the giant wheels of these large machines.

Community participation in conservation management, preserving the beautiful childhood scene for the next generation

Regarding the choice of protection area system now hotly debated in Meinong society, Brother Jinshan feels that whether the future conservation system moves toward a "nature reserve" or a "national nature park," both are good for Meinong, but local consensus is most important. He believes that if the government truly intends to do conservation, it should plant more butterfly-attracting plants; when the butterfly situation improves, birds and other organisms will also multiply more, and the higher-up-the-food-chain harrier will naturally come uninvited, thus building a complete and rich ecological system.

On the other hand, the government should channel money into "community monitoring," hiring locals as "habitat conservation officers," "mountain forest patrol officers" or "species surveyors" to carry out river patrols, mountain forest maintenance and species surveys, which can both protect the land and create job opportunities. Add to that the cultivation of interpretive skills, and besides community monitoring work, the community can also develop sustainable deep eco-tourism.

Although Brother Jinshan could not take part in the anti-reservoir movement more than 20 years ago, his 10-plus years of closeness to the mountains and forests and his active efforts to restore butterfly habitats equally express his sincerity and love for this land and his hometown. "I just want children to also have such beautiful childhood memories. If this beautiful scenery disappears and the next generation cannot see it, I would feel very reluctant."

A cool breeze swept in, announcing that autumn had long since arrived, and the slanting sun fell on Brother Jinshan's old house as crepuscular skipper butterflies came out one after another to visit flowers. After the interview ended I was in no hurry to leave, but instead sat there dazed, enjoying this rare comfort while savoring in my mind the sentence "a place suitable for butterflies to live is also suitable for humans to live."

In early spring, the beautiful mountains are reflected in the rice paddies just planted with seedlings; after autumn arrives, the busy winter cropping continues, and scenes of labor are visible everywhere. In Meinong, besides the beauty of nature, the most beautiful thing is the "people" who live here. After Brother Jinshan and I finished the last cup of good tea and said goodbye to each other, I hope Brother Jinshan's wishes can gradually come true!