Taiwan’s giant trees could vanish within two centuries if their current rate of loss continues, a research team warned on Friday. The group, Taiwan Champion Trees, also identified the tallest known tree in East Asia. Their study highlights how these ancient trees serve as massive carbon sinks. Moreover, the researchers found that 5 percent of the island’s documented giant trees died in roughly a decade. Therefore, they concluded that these ecological treasures face an accelerating extinction risk.
The team discovered an 84.1-meter Taiwan fir, or Taiwania cryptomerioides, in 2023. They located it near the Daan River’s source inside Shei-Pa National Park. Consequently, this tree now stands as the tallest recorded in all of East Asia. Rebecca Hsu, a Taiwan Forestry Research Institute researcher and co-founder, confirmed the measurement. An expedition spent two days scaling the park’s mountains to tape the tree.
To find these giant trees across Taiwan’s forbidding terrain, the group combined government LiDAR surveys with crowdsourced verification. Professor Wang Chi-kuei of National Cheng Kung University led the data analysis. He explained that algorithms initially flagged 57,065 candidates from 950 million trees. However, 93 percent of those algorithm-derived heights proved incorrect. As a result, hundreds of online citizen scientists helped manually check the data. This effort ultimately narrowed the list to 941 verified giant trees.
Furthermore, the team investigated the carbon storage capacity of these forests. In 2024, they surveyed a four-hectare old-growth plot on Mount Tao. Volunteers calculated a carbon density of 1,324 tonnes per hectare. That figure ranks among the world’s densest, just behind Tasmania’s 1,867 tonnes. Still, Hsu noted that this number likely grossly undercounts the true capacity. The calculation excluded carbon stored in the trees’ roots.
More alarmingly, Wang compared the project’s two data sets, recorded about a decade apart. He found that 5 percent of the 941 identified giant trees died from typhoons, landslides, and other causes. “At this rate, ecologically important giant trees would die out in the next couple of centuries,” he warned. Consequently, the study calls for urgent conservation action. The group published their findings in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Their work underscores the critical need to protect these undervalued carbon sinks before they disappear forever.
