Reports from the southern county of Pingtung this week that thousands of migratory grey-faced buzzard-eagles were being slaughtered by poachers threatened to bring unwelcome international attention to Taiwan's troubled wildlife conservation efforts.
National park officials quickly dismissed the reports as being wildly exaggerated, adding that nightly patrols this month had not resulted in any arrests.
Still, there is room for concern. Taiwan's mountainous interior is formidably rugged, and the rangers who patrol it are underpaid and poorly equipped. The poachers they track are hardy mountain folk whose motto is 'live on the mountain, live off the mountain'.
The pressure to do so has increased in recent years as aboriginal men have lost city jobs to cheaper migrant workers from Thailand and other countries. Returning to their villages at a time when aboriginal pride and consciousness is rising, many see little reason why they should heed the laws of the Han Chinese.
'They stole our land, but they can't stop us from hunting,' a Bunun man from Pingtung said to me a few years ago as he unpacked roots for traditional medicines from a dusty car which contained his five children and a dead mountain pig. Last year, while hiking across Taiwan's Central Mountain Range in Nantou county, I met Atayal hunters out at night riding an old motorcycle up a remote access road.
The rider in front wore a powerful headlight that he used to sweep the steep slopes looking for flying squirrels. When his passenger saw the red gleam of a squirrel's eyes, he fired his old hunting rifle. They claimed they could bag 20 or 30 squirrels a night.