Chiayi County, Taiwan, June 2: Hacking at a bamboo plant with a machete, Avayi Vayayana peels back the shoot’s stiff bark as he scans southern Taiwan’s mountains, anxious for more of the money-making crop his Indigenous tribe increasingly struggles to find.                Â
Generations of the Tsou tribe have lived off Alishan township’s bamboo forests, which Vayayana says were planted by his forefathers and typically harvested in April and May.                Â
But “the weather in the last few years has really been out of whack”, the 62-year-old tribal chief tells AFP.                Â
“The rainfall has been delayed and the bamboo shoots’ growth is noticeably affected.”                Â
In the Indigenous village T’fuya, the dark-brown cones of the island’s native stone bamboo — or phyllostachys lithophila — have become harder to spot.                Â
“The little young shoots will not sprout if there’s no rain. After a while, they will die inside the ground,” Vayayana says.                Â
The February-to-April rains are crucial to the growth of bamboo shoots — which are popular in Asian cuisine — but since late last year, there have not been any significant downpours.                Â
The Tsou tribe, which has a population of 7,000 in Alishan, has seen their bamboo shoot harvest steadily decline.                Â
On a misty May morning, a welcome drizzle finally blankets the bamboo forest Vayayana is working in, but he tells AFP it is too late.                Â
This year, his haul is one-third of 2022’s harvest.                Â
Worse, Vayayana and his family must now also contend with crop-raiding monkeys, he explains after an airgun shot rings out in the distance: his cousin trying to scare away the marauders.                Â
“Because many surrounding bamboo forests have died, now where there are bamboo shoots, all the monkeys will go,” he says.
