Second draft revision of China’s Wildlife Protection Law ‘a big step backwards

A new version of China’s most important law on wildlife conservation and use omits the legislative goal of preventing risks to public health and throws open the doors to captive breeding of wild animals.

Time changes things, and never more than during a pandemic.

On 10 February 2020, in the early days of Covid-19, the legislative work committee of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee announced it was adding a revision of the Wildlife Protection Law to its to-do list. Some days previously, research showing how animals such as pangolins can be hosts for coronaviruses had caused great public concern – and an unprecedented consensus on the importance of wildlife protection. Two weeks later, the Standing Committee announced a complete ban on the consumption of terrestrial wild animals as food, and a crackdown on illegal wildlife trade.

The sudden opportunity to change the long-standing approach in Chinese legislation which views wildlife as a “resource” encouraged academics and organisations working on wild animal conservation in China to speak out, putting forward suggestions for the revision in the hope of resolving what they saw as entrenched problems with the law. A 2016 revision of the law had also given rise to such hopes, which were ultimately disappointed.

In October 2020, a first draft of the new revision was published for public consultation. Though it did not do away with the use of wild animals as resources, conservationists saw some significant changes which could help to protect wildlife and ecosystems in China and abroad. But almost two years later, in early September 2022, a second draft of the revision emerged, with a consultation period running up to 1 October. The new draft reverses several significant changes made in the first draft, to the disappointment of hopeful conservationists, who are describing it as “a big step backwards”.

https://chinadialogue-net.cdn.amppr...gn=simplified&utm_content=simplifiedc1347&amp