Taiwan’s long struggle for international recognition in the face of Chinese resistance gained unprecedented attention during the coronavirus pandemic, due to the exclusion of the island nation from the World Health Organization. Taiwan’s bird lovers are now joining in that fight.
The Chinese Wild Bird Federation (CWBF), Taiwan’s biggest bird conservation group, said in a statement today that it no longer has ties to Birdlife International, a Cambridge, UK-based non-governmental organization. CWBF said that BirdLife decided on Sept. 7 to remove it as a partner after the Taiwanese group refused to meet requests including that it sign a document committing to not promoting Taiwanese independence, and to change its name in Chinese, which translates as “Republic of China Wild Bird Federation.”
According to CWBF, BirdLife also said the Taiwanese group posed a risk to the organization, and that it would no longer participate in Taiwan government-funded events as “it would be ‘odd’ for BirdLife to distance itself from the ‘independence agenda’ of the Republic of China” while continuing to benefit from funding. It wasn’t clear from the statement the precise reasons that led to BirdLife’s decision.
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