Historically

Taiwan's economy is based on agriculture and industry. The island is densely settle and farmed for many centuries. We can infer that this was not the case before this time period. There weren't any roads and construction before the time of agriculture. The population today is about 20 million. Many people have migrated over from China decades ago. Forest cover today is about 52% of the total land area, which mostly consists of non-native tree plantations. Trees and forests must have been cut down in order to convert land to agriculture.

From the development of nature reserves and national parks to protect the different habitats, we know that  what was once plentiful is now in danger of becoming extinct. Taiwan is an important endemic bird area. There is now currently 15 restricted range species. These bird, majority that most likely had inhabited the lowland forests are now restricted to upland mountain slopes. This implies that the environment must have changed so much that these species could not adapt to and needed to find a suitable environment. Habitats may have been destroyed as well. With such a high bird species richness (338 species), the ecoregion must have high amounts of forest cover, near tropical latitude, and diverse landscapes. Another cause for the large amount of bird species is that Taiwan is located on the western Pacific coastal migratory routes.

Taiwan Montane Forests