On February 17, China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) sent a recommendation letter to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, recommending that the supervision and management of the country’s wildlife resources should be included in the scope of the central environmental protection inspector, based on the current situation of the source of COVID-19, the current situation of illegal wildlife trade in China and regulatory problems.
Since its launch in 2016, the Central Eco-Environmental Protection Inspector has played an important role in solving outstanding ecological and environmental problems, improving the quality of the ecological environment, and promoting high-quality development. It has won widespread praise from the people and widespread concern from the international community.
At present, the country is in a critical period to combat the pneumonia outbreak of new coronavirus infections. While preventing and controlling the epidemic, it is important to cut off the spread of the virus from the source. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that the virus of this epidemic originated from wild animals operated by the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan City.
CBCGDF found in actual work that such illegal wildlife trading places are far more than one place in China, and there are even flooding situations in some areas, which have formed illegal hunting, breeding, illegal trading and use of wild animal’s interest chains. Especially in Guangxi, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Hunan and other places, there are a large number of full chains of illegal transactions, which poses a great threat to China's public health security and is also an important source of major epidemic diseases.
Since the outbreak of the SARS epidemic in 2003, why the problems in the field of supervision and management of wildlife resources have been endless, so that in early 2020, the same mistakes were made in the epidemic in Wuhan?
CBCGDF believes that the competent authority for the supervision and management of wildlife resources has not been able to conscientiously sum up and learn the lessons of major epidemics from the perspective of maintaining national ecological security and social and public safety; departmental interests and even personal illegal interests come first, protection and management have been neglected for a long time, and the restrictions imposed on the forestry system for hunting, breeding, and operating wildlife licenses are too low, which has led to the proliferation of illegal wildlife trading as a well-known "open secret". This also directly led to the "China's Implementation of the Millennium Development Goals Report" published by China in 2015. The only thing that could not be completed was Item 7B: Reducing the loss of biodiversity and significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity reduction by 2010.
In October this year, led by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the CBD COP15 will be held in Kunming. It will adopt the remarkable Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, this is a good opportunity to show the effectiveness of China's biodiversity conservation and highlight the construction of an ecological civilization.
Therefore, CBCGDF recommends that in 2020, the Central Ecological Environmental Protection Inspector should conduct special inspections on the management of national wildlife resource supervision, supervise the implementation and implementation of Xi Jinping's ecological civilization thoughts, and thoroughly investigate the wildlife management authorities from the source to supervise negligence, to fundamentally curb illegal wildlife trade, safeguard national ecological security, and eliminate hidden public health hazards.
CBCGDF will also actively mobilize wildlife protection volunteers across the country to fully assist and cooperate in doing a good job of special supervision in this regard.
Original Chinese article:
http://www.cbcgdf.org/NewsShow/4854/11343.html
By / Maggie