Chen Sun

A Taiwanese conservation project is reintroducing an endangered orchid to Orchid Island, aiming to turn the island's nuclear waste site into a plant center. However, the indigenous Tao people previously planted taro there in 2006 to protest the nuclear waste and reclaim their land. The confrontation between the orchid and the taro represents a complex entanglement of biodiversity preservation, indigenous environmental justice, local plant knowledge, and environmental governance. This research will use long-term ethnography to analyze the tension between conservationists and the Tao over nature restoration amidst nuclear threats and biodiversity loss, studying how conservation is localized and entangled with indigenous knowledge and power dynamics.