4.3.2. Governance Network between 2012 and 2013

The indigenous protest in 2011 and change in the attitude of the Forestry Bureau toward local participation prompted it to begin to test very limited local community participation measures. From 2011 to 2013, the HBFB began to strengthen its interaction with indigenous communities. However, due to long-term disputes over land ownership and the resulting mistrust, most tribe members remained reluctant to communicate directly with the HBFB. Only one major actor continued to negotiate the land tenure issue, and other tribe members did not directly participate in forest park governance issues. The HBFB continued to promote community forestry projects in the DFA and sought to integrate the capacities of various communities to promote ecotourism. Because the Han-dominant communities generally welcomed this new community-based policy, interaction between Han-dominant community organizations and the HBFB began to intensify. In the academic sector, the NDHU Team began to conduct research projects and gradually strengthened the interaction with government authorities, Han-dominant community organizations, and indigenous communities. Because the NDHU team's research included governance issues of all major stakeholders, contact between the research team and indigenous people actors was initiated to gain a deeper understanding of the views of indigenous people. However, due to long-accumulated alienation, the interaction between the indigenous people and other stakeholders was relatively weak. Between the indigenous and Han-dominant community organizations, the previous isolation was maintained, and no substantive communication occurred between the two communities. The actor interaction and governance network during this period is presented by Figure 3.

**Figure 3.** Governance network: 2012–2013.

#### 4.3.3. Governance Network between 2014 and 2015

The period from 2014 to 2015 was critical for the development of the governance network. On the one hand, the HBFB developed a volunteer interpreter group in local communities. These volunteers proved to be a key social group actively participating in governance. On the other hand, the NDHU Team started to promote citizen science in 2014. People joining volunteer and citizen science groups gradually merged into a subnetwork. The citizen science network aimed primarily to fill gaps in natural science research in academia with local knowledge, through input from local volunteers. Citizen scientists, under the guidance of scholars, regularly monitored birds and amphibians in the DFA area and reported the results to academics and the HBFB. The evolving citizen science network, due to the roots of its origin, developed a close collaborative relationship with the HBFB, community organizations, and academia.

At the same time, the indigenous community network began to emerge. In 2012, the Hualien County Government set up a tribal affairs assembly mechanism for indigenous communities, and tribal chiefs met regularly to discuss tribal affairs. Two of the chiefs began to address DFA-related issues when they chaired meetings. Through regular meetings, their discussions increasingly reached consensus. Among the most crucial consensuses reached was that DFA land was the traditional territory of Amis people. This represents the fundamental "bottom line" for DFA governance from the indigenous perspective. Because of fundamental differences regarding land tenure claims, the indigenous network did not formally interacted with other subnetworks. However, due to the involvement of one tribal chief in the citizen science network during this period, the interaction between indigenous communities, the citizen science network, and academia, although still very limited, began to develop. The overall situation of the actor interaction and governance network during this period is presented using Figure 4.

**Figure 4.** Governance network: 2014–2015.
