China’s thorough ban on illegal wildlife trade timely amid COVID19
By Liu Caiyu
Chinese lawmakers agreed Monday to thoroughly ban the
illegal wildlife trade and eliminate bad habits of eating wild animals in
China, the decision was hailed as "timely" and demonstrates a
"global impact" experts agreed.
The decision will "thoroughly ban illegal wildlife
trade and eliminate bad habits of eating wild animals to safeguard people's
health and livelihoods." The
decision was made on Monday's bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of
the National People's Congress, China's top legislature.
The decision expands the legal sphere and establishes a
system for the future of "complete prohibition of wild animals." The
current Wildlife Protection Law is only limited to national protected animals
or other wild animals that have no legal source and have not passed quarantine
inspection, according to the legislature.
But comprehensive revision of the wildlife protection law
requires a process. The special decision on Monday is to clear and
comprehensively prohibit the consumption of wild animals in a timely manner
before the relevant laws are amended. This provides strong legislative
guarantees to win the war against the epidemic and protect the lives and health
of individuals, Chinese lawmakers said.
Violators of Wildlife Protection Law shall be given harsher
punishment and face crackdowns and stricter monitoring, lawmakers said.
Some illegal wildlife venues are still not prohibited and
wildlife markets in some places are prevalent during the outbreak. Experts
reached by the Global Times said the decision helps to crackdown on such
illegal behavior and curb disease originating from animals that can be
transmitted to human beings.
"It's a big step toward the complete ban on the
wildlife trade in China. It expects to help some regions to alter their bad
habits of eating wild animals and fundamentally change the industry," a
re-search fellow from the Beijing Forestry University's College of Nature
Conservation Wildlife Institute told the Global Times on the condition of
anonymity.
The research fellow suggested that the government shall
release specific lists on what animals are included in the ban and highlight those
wild animals that may pose health risks to human beings.
The ban doesn't include wildlife products and wildlife in
medicine use. Wild animals such as pangolin scales are commonly used in
traditional Chinese medicine to promote lactation and impotence.
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, issues
regarding wild animals and its hidden dangers to public health safety have
attracted widespread attention. Many believe the coronavirus was trans-mitted
from wild animals, such as bats and pangolins, before it spread to humans.
"Thoroughly banning the illegal wildlife trade will
provide an example for neighboring countries, forcing them to change their
views on the wild animal industry as a whole. It will strengthen China's global
ecological and environmental governance, "Sophia Zhang, assistant
Secretary General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development
Foundation, told the Global Times.
Before the nationwide ban on the illegal wildlife trade,
many local governments, including northern China's Tianjin Municipality and
southeast China's Guangdong and Fujian Provinces announced a ban on trading and
indiscriminate consumption of wildlife after the coronavirus outbreak.
The Law on Wild Animal Protection, which was released in
1989 and amended in 2018, prohibits the consumption of protected animals.
According to Xinhua News Agency, the law bans hunting and killing key protected
animals, as well as selling, buying and using these animals and their products.
Source: Global Times
China’s thorough ban on illegal wildlife trade timely amid COVID19
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