《TAIPEI TIMES》 Film on DGH’s efforts awarded

By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

A documentary on the Directorate-General of Highways’ （DGH） efforts to protect land crabs in Pingtung County’s Kenting （墾丁） last month won awards at the Best Shorts Competition in California.

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Mission-Land Crab Redemption （護蟹任務） won an Award of Excellence as a short documentary in the Nature, Environment and Wildlife category, and an Award of Merit for editing.

The awards are an encouragement to the staff at the agency’s Third Maintenance Office, who are in charge of maintenance work on Provincial Highway No. 26, which passes through Kenting, the DGH said.

Peak breeding season for land crabs falls on the 15th, 16th and 17th day of the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth months on the lunar calendar, with each female able to produce 100,000 to 400,000 eggs at a time, the agency said.

To ensure that they have safe passage across the highway during the breeding season, the office and the Kenting National Park Administration have worked since 2013 to regulate traffic on the road and have personnel helping protect the crabs, it said.

It has also entrusted experts at the Pingtung County Environmental Protection Union to conduct research on the movements of terrestrial crabs, as well as roadkill statistics.

Following a suggestion from Tzeng Chyng-shyan （曾晴賢）, a professor at National Tsing Hua University’s College of Life Science, the agency built two culverts under the highway to allow the crabs to cross safely.

Access to the road at the culvert at kilometer mark 39.75 was blocked with tarpaulin and the crabs make their way to the sea on rope ladders inside the culvert, the DGH said.

The method has helped reconnect land crabs to their natural habitats that lie across the road from the sea, it said.

The documentary, which was produced by Taiwan Original Vision Communication Co, was made to inform people on how highway maintenance workers have used ecological engineering methods to protect land crabs and their habitats, the DGH said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES