The Budai Wetland Ecological Park is located in an idle salt field on the south side of the urban area of Budai Township, Chiayi County. It used to be the site of the Six Areas Salt Field of the Budai Salt Field, with a total area (including the lagoon waters) of about 1,385 hectares, bordered by the Xibin Interchange Highway and the Zanliao Ditch to the north, the Formosa 17 Road and Budai Junior High School to the east, crossing the Longgong River to Formosa 17 Road on the south, and bounded by the lagoon waters on the west.
Several hundred years ago, the Budai Wetland Ecological Park was originally a shallow lagoon in the inland sea (i.e., the remaining of the Haomei Lagoon today), which was turned into an aquaculture farm when the ancestors moved into the reclamation area. At the end of the 1930s, the Japanese demanded salt products, which was the mother of all industries, due to the expansion of the South China Sea, so they compulsorily expropriated people's farms to develop them into salt fields.
After the restoration of Taiwan, in the 1950s and 1960s, the salt drying business had created a "golden age" for the southwest coast of Taiwan. However, as the social and economic structure of Taiwan changed, the salt industry in Taiwan was unable to compete with the globalization of salt imports, and in 2002, Taiyen finally announced the abandonment of all salt fields.
To date, the abandoned and idle salt fields that have been neglected for many years have become wetlands that attract a large number of winter and summer migratory birds to come and feed, especially from September to April each year, when the area is one of the most important habitats for wild birds along the southwest coast due to erosion and desalination by rainwater over the years and the sinking of the ground due to over-pumping of groundwater.
In the ecological park, you can observe many kinds of birds such as the black-faced spoonbills, the white spoonbills and the black-headed gulls. The rich diversity of species is worth exploring.
