Taiwan's Forestry History: A Century's Pivot from Resource Extraction to Land Stewardship

Who took our precious forests? The answer may not be what you think.

Late Qing Era: The Fuse of the Industrial Revolution and the Camphor Monopoly

The modern development of Taiwan's forests did not begin with a hunger for timber, but with a monopoly on camphor.

Global Celluloid Industry and the "Open the Mountains, Pacify the Aborigines" Policy

In the mid-19th century, the West was undergoing the Second Industrial Revolution. The invention of celluloid (an early plastic raw material) and smokeless gunpowder turned camphor into a strategic material. At the time, Taiwan supplied roughly 70% of the world's camphor.

Policy logic: To shore up the imperial treasury, the Qing court launched the "Open the Mountains, Pacify the Aborigines" campaign — ostensibly civilizing, but in reality designed to push deep into the mountains and set up "camphor stoves."
World-historical parallel: This aligned with the resource colonialism by which the Western powers were globally plundering specialty crops.
Long-term effects: Forestry development in this period was extractive, depleting the lowland camphor forests and breaking the ecological boundaries of indigenous mountain peoples — sparking ethnic conflicts that would last a century.

The Japanese Era: Imperial Modernization and a Civilization of Steel Rails

After Japan took possession of Taiwan in 1895, forestry policy shifted from "peripheral plunder" to "state-run systematization."

Imperial Strategy and the Three Great State-Run Forest Stations

Japan's Meiji modernization required vast quantities of high-quality timber, and the cypress forests deep in Taiwan's mountains were, in the empire's eyes, the best material for infrastructure.

Technical inference: That the Japanese government was willing to invest enormous capital in building the three great forest railways at Alishan, Taipingshan, and Bashianshan indicates they regarded Taiwan as permanent territory and pursued long-term management.
Forest railway technical detail: They imported the American Shay geared locomotive, whose vertical cylinders and bevel-gear drive were designed to overcome the extreme gradients and broken terrain of Taiwan's mountains.
World-historical perspective: This reflected the early-20th-century Empire of Japan's ambition to build an "imperial forestry" modeled on the Western powers, using Taiwan's cypress for the construction of shrines (such as Meiji Shrine) and warships, symbolizing the legitimacy and power of the regime.

The Postwar Pivot: A Cold War Island and "Forestry to Fund Government"

After 1945, the regime changed. The situation faced by the Nationalist government differed completely from that of the Japanese era, leading to a drastic turn in the fate of the forests.

The End of US Aid and the Urgency of Survival

From the 1950s through the 1960s, Taiwan was pushed to the front line of the Cold War. As US aid ended in 1965, the regime urgently needed to raise its own funds to maintain massive military spending.

Policy motivation: It pushed the industrial policy of "using agriculture and forestry to nurture industry and commerce" (Yao He-nien, 1993), treating the forests as a "green ATM." At this stage, forest resources were a commodity for earning US dollar foreign exchange.
- In 1956, development was expanded across thirteen forest districts, enforcing the "three more forestry policy" of "more afforestation, more logging, more revenue to the treasury" (Chiao Kuo-mo, 1993).
- In 1958, the Taiwan Forestry Management Guidelines were promulgated, ordering that all natural forests across the province (except those reserved for research, observation, or scenic purposes) be cleared on a schedule — cypress within 80 years, others within 40 years — and converted in stages into plantation forests (Yao He-nien, 1993).
Technological pivot: the road revolution: To maximize profits, the government abandoned the costly railway and adopted the highly destructive "forest road system." Heavy trucks could now drive directly into the deep mountains. Not only was the speed of logging astonishing, the improperly cut roads also created severe debris-flow risks for later generations.

A Comparison of the Historical Data

Data analysis: According to Yao He-nien (1993), the three Japanese state-run forest stations (Alishan, Bashianshan, Taipingshan) cut a combined area of about 18,432 hectares from 1912 to 1945, with a logged volume of about 6.63 million cubic meters. It must be noted that this number covers only the state-run stations, and does not include privately operated loggers in the same period — so the actual total cut is likely higher. Between 1946 and 1990 in the postwar era, the logged volume reached more than 44.567 million cubic meters, with logged area exceeding 344,000 hectares — roughly 6.7 times the Japanese state-run figures (Peng Kuo-tung, 1989; Forestry Bureau, 1991; cited in Lin Kuo-chuan, 1993).
Differences in interpretation: For the peak logging year of 1972, the Forestry Bureau Gazetteer (1997) recorded 1.8 million cubic meters, while Chiao Kuo-mo (1993) estimates more than 2 million cubic meters. This shows that the forestry history of the great timber-cutting age still awaits further opening of historical materials and academic clarification (Lee Ken-cheng, 2016). But different sources point to the same narrative.
Inference about the era: This reflects how, under the "retake the Mainland" mindset, the regime treated Taiwan as a temporary residence — a short-term consumption strategy, rather than long-term land planning. But the "framing" of the Nationalist historical view is this: it reframed a larger, cheaper, less sustainability-minded resource extraction as an epic struggle for "survival" and "development."

A Manufactured Binary

In decades of education and propaganda, the Nationalist government successfully built a binary formula:

Japanese era = plunder: It defined Japanese development as "seizing colonial resources to serve the metropole," emphasizing how Alishan's sacred trees were cut down to build Meiji Shrine, reinforcing victim sentiment. Japanese-era forestry relied on forest railways, whose tracks were fixed and visible, and the "sacred tree" stumps we see at Alishan today are mostly remnants of Japanese-era logging. These leftover legacies kept reminding people of the development of that era.
Postwar era = construction: It packaged the great timber-cutting in the moral language of "the base for national revival," "economic development," and "settling veterans." Furthermore, the government tightly tied forestry development to the construction of the Central Cross-Island Highway, forming a heroic narrative of the time. Postwar development brought in the American-style forest road system, using heavy trucks to penetrate the mountains. Forest roads were quick and cheap to build, and after logging often disappeared or were closed due to landslides.

The misleading point: This led the public to ignore the continuity of forestry management. In fact, the early postwar Forestry Bureau almost completely inherited the state-run forest station system and technologies of the Japanese era, but executed them at far greater intensity.

The Century's Turn: From "Conquest" to "Reconciliation"

From the 1980s on, environmental consciousness awoke globally, and Taiwan went through movements such as "Save the Chilan Sacred Trees."

The 1991 logging ban: This was the watershed of Taiwan's forestry history. The government formally announced a complete ban on logging in natural forests, and forest management policy shifted from "economic extraction" to "land stewardship."
East Asian context: This aligned with the trend of East Asian countries (such as China and Thailand) imposing logging bans in the 1990s after experiencing large-scale floods.
Subsequent effects: The logging ban brought Taiwan's timber self-sufficiency rate down below 1%, leaving the industry extremely dependent on imports. This has prompted contemporary thinkers to rebalance "private forest utilization" with "sustainable development of domestic timber."

Conclusion: The Trajectory of Forestry Through the Eras

Looking across the entire timeline, Taiwan's forests have undergone three shifts in how their value was defined:

Before the 19th century: Forests were "wilderness," obstacles to be cleared.
Early to mid-20th century: Forests were "assets," chips to exchange for national strength and US dollars.
21st century: Forests are "homeland," resilient barriers buffering extreme climate.

Three centuries of forestry policy have, at heart, been about the changing definition of "natural value." When we walk into Alishan today, what we see should not be only beautiful scenery, but also the deep marks of global geopolitics and survival struggles carved into those tree rings.

References

Lee Ken-cheng, 2016. "How Many Trees Did Taiwan's Great Timber-Cutting Age Actually Cut?" Posted on the Daiyuanshan Cuifeng Lake website, July 20, 2016. URL: http://www.taiwanland.tw/06Dah-yuan/discussion/word27.html
Taiwan Provincial Forestry Bureau, 1997. Gazetteer of the Taiwan Provincial Forestry Bureau. Taipei: Taiwan Provincial Forestry Bureau.
Agriculture Media, 2019. "Listening to the Life Story of the Forests: Unveiling the Beauty and Vicissitudes of Taiwan's Great Timber-Cutting Age." https://www.agriharvest.tw/archives/8214/.
Yao He-nien, 1993. "Forestry in the Japanese Occupation Period," pp. 9–30; "Forestry in the Early Retrocession Period," pp. 31–64. In Forest Gazetteer of the Republic of China, Taiwan, ed. Editorial Committee of the Forest Gazetteer of the Republic of China, Taiwan. Taipei: Chinese Forestry Association.
Chiao Kuo-mo, 1993. "Forestry Policy," pp. 175–193. In Forest Gazetteer of the Republic of China, Taiwan. Taipei: Chinese Forestry Association.
Lin Kuo-chuan, 1993. "Past and Present of Forest Resources," pp. 1–29. In Sustainable Management of Forest Resources, eds. Hsia Yu-chiu, Wang Li-chih, Chin Heng-piao. Taipei: Taiwan Forestry Research Institute.
Peng Kuo-tung, 1989. "Ecological Issues Faced by Taiwanese Forest Management." Paper presented at "Forest Management under Ecological Issues." Taipei: Forestry Research Institute.
Forestry Bureau, 1991. Taiwan Provincial Forestry Statistics. Taipei: Forestry Bureau.