The ecosystem in Taiwan’s tea regions is thriving! Visiting the tea farms over the past few years, we’ve noticed more and more wildlife—wild boars, Reeves’s muntjacs, rabbits, Swinhoe’s pheasants, and macaques, many of which aren’t even afraid of people.
Wild boars are definitely the most common visitors to the tea farms because they absolutely love the organic soybean meal fertilizer used on the tea plants. A while back, while walking through the tea fields, I ran into a few tea farmers who were fuming. Come to find out, the wild boars had eaten all the soybean meal, stunting the tea plants’ growth, and the frustrated farmers were talking about calling in a hunter. It seems wild boars are true foodies who know good fertilizer when they see it. Since soybean meal makes the tea taste incredible, I wonder if it has the same effect on the wild boars—I’ll have to ask our hunter friend next time 😂.
Aside from wild boars, there are also plenty of monkeys in the mountains, along with all sorts of amusing tales about them. For instance, they actually keep track of crop seasons (stealing spring bamboo shoots in April and apples in October), test whether fruit is sweet enough, and even throw fruit at dogs from a distance. Thanks to successful conservation efforts in recent years, macaques now travel in troops of a hundred or more. I heard a story a few years back about a farmer who headed out for a quick errand in the morning only to come home in the afternoon and find his entire fruit harvest picked clean by monkeys 😂.
Review 1: Taiwan’s ecosystem is improving, and there’s more wildlife—that’s wonderful!
Review 2: Good thing monkeys haven’t learned how to brew tea yet. 😂
