This year (2024), on December 12th, the Taiwan Ecotourism and Regional Revitalization Alliance (TERRA) was jointly established at the Taipei NGO House by ecotourism counseling teams and tribal communities from across Taiwan. Over 150 distinguished guests from industry, government, academia attended the event to witness this historic moment, including Legislative Yuan members Ariel Chang and Hsu Fu-kuei, Control Yuan members Tien Chiu-chin, Shih Chin-fang, Acting Director CJ Chen of the National Parks Services, Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency Deputy Director Hao-Chen Lin, Secretary of the Tourism Fang Cheng-kuang, Technical Superintendent Li-Ju Song of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, President Chin-Lung Chang of the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, and representatives of 44 ecotourism organizations, 65 community tribes, and 10 counseling teams from around Taiwan.

The “Sen Lin People” activity jointly organized by the NPUST Department of Forestry and Ching Jing Lin Education Foundation has entered its sixth year this year. Taking place at the NPUST’s Baoli Forest Farm on December 6 (2024), an estimated 4,000 native Taiwanese species of trees were planted on two hectares of land during the day. Tree species included Acacia confusa, Liquidambar formosana, Palaquium formosanum, Autummn Maple Tree, Philippine Ebony Persimmon, and Diospyros eriantha.

The Conference for Meritorious Forestry and Nature Conservation, known as the “Green Oscars”, was held on November 23 (2024) to commend those who have made outstanding contributions to forest resources maintenance and natural ecological conservation. At the conference, Assistant Professor Hsin-Ju Wu of the NPUST Department of Forestry was awarded for her outstanding nature conservation work which promotes local cooperation for the sustainable utilization of mountain forest resources and the revitalization of traditional culture.

Pingtung County’s Mudan Township Office received approval from by the National Development Council to conduct local regeneration projects running from 2020 to 2024. With support of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency (Ministry of Agriculture), and professional assistance from the NPUST Forestry Department’s Community Forestry Center, they are promoting local creative development under the theme of under-forest economies. These economic activities, which include under-forest chicken raising, mushroom cultivation, and beekeeping in the tribal mountain villages, have received enthusiastic responses and investments from villagers and are becoming an emerging featured industry in Mudan Township. Branch Director Jui-Fen Yang and Section Chief Hsien-Pin Hsu of the Pingtung Branch of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency were joined by NPUST Vice-President Weng-Ling Shih, Department of Forestry Director Yu-ting Wu, Forestry Professor Mei-Hui Chen, and Mudan Township Mayor Chuang-Chih at 10 a.m. on November 27 (2024) to publish the project results and hold a plaque unveiling for the Domestic Timber Workshop and Forest Biomass Energy Recycling Site in Dongyuan Village, Mudan Township. The event, which began with a traditional song performance by the Mudan Ancient Folksong Class, was attended by more than 90 local community partners, making for a lively scene.

The winners of the 2024 IMV Technological Innovation Competition were recently announced, and a team from NPUST secured the top spot in the Ecological Sustainability category among non-enterprise contestants. The team was composed of Distinguished Research Fellow Yu-Min Wang and Distinguished Research Fellow Cheng-Huei Yang of the NPUST General Research Service Center, Professor Wen-Shin Lin and Assistant Professor Li-Wei Liu of the Department of Plant Industry and students from the International Irrigation Research and Service Center. Together, they submitted the results of their “SPRI Low Carbon and Environmental Friendly Rice” project for consideration and won the first place for Ecological Sustainability. At the competition, which focused on the key issues of energy conservation, carbon reduction, and ecological restoration, NPUST was able to demonstrate its strong capabilities in technological innovation and sustainable development.

NPUST was founded on agriculture science and has been continuously innovating in related areas of study for the past one hundred years. And now, in order to further promote “agricultural value-added” and “cross-field talent cultivation”, NPUST has built a Center for Technological Agriculture, which officially opened at 9:30 am on the school’s 100th anniversary, November 16, 2024. NPUST President Chin-Lung Chang, Director of the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (Ministry of Agriculture) Jeng-Fang Huang, and Academia Sinica research fellows Chang-Hung Chou, Ching T. Hou, I Chiu Liao, and Gwo-Ching Chang jointly participated in the plaque unveiling.