According to media reports, at around 6 am on April 23, an adult female wild Siberian tiger was found in Linhu Village, Baiyuwan Town, Mishan City, Heilongjiang Province, which later attracted attention of the police and villagers. At about 10 a.m., in the process of moving northwards across crop fields outside the village, the tiger ran down a villager, smashed the window of a car before hiding in a ditch in another part of Linhu Village. At around 14 p.m, after the authorities had determined the location of the tiger, they waited for the arrival of a narcotic gun to calm down the tiger. At about 18 pm, the tiger was shot by the narcotic gun, the use of which had been approved before. Then the tiger was captured and caged at about 21 p.m. At present, local authorities are conducting a physical examination of the tiger, and it is said that its DNA will be extracted for further study.

From the operating process above, the author thinks there are several issues worth discussion:

I. Legal or not, that is the question

Article 21 of the Wildlife Protection Law of the PRC states: "Hunting or killing wildlife under special state protection shall be forbidden.”

"Anyone who needs to hunt and catch wildlife under first-level national protection for scientific research, population control, epidemic source monitoring or other special purposes shall apply to the department in charge of wildlife protection under the State Council for a special hunting and catching license; anyone who needs to hunt and catch wildlife under second-level national protection shall apply to the department in charge of wildlife protection of the government at levels of provinces, autonomous regions or municipalities under the Central Government for a special hunting and catching license."

The act to narcotize a tiger with a narcotic gun, then capture and cage it, is of course "hunting". Whatever the special circumstances are, anyone who wants to hunt wildlife under special state protection, should apply to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration for a special hunting license. The relevant personnel in Mishan City apparently had not gone through the administrative approval procedures before the illegal hunting.

Some people may ask, in the face of a tiger attack, shouldn’t human beings do anything rather than await attacks? The author thinks this claim is not in accordance with the fact but also misinterpret the whole thing. The fact is that tigers didn't attack humans. It had been spotted near an abandoned house before it left the village and entered the farmland at around 10 am. It can be seen from the video that though the tiger ran down a villager while running, but it ran forward without even looking back and attacking the villager. The tiger then hid in a ditch near the village. If a tiger attempts to attack a human, of course, the human should not be caught without a fight and can adopt justifiable defense or emergency escaping, which are allowed by the law. However, there are strict conditions for both measures, which does not apply to the tiger hiding in the ditch.

So it is not reasonable to hunt a tiger that has just strayed into a village. Even if we need to hunt it, we should go through the administrative examination and approval procedures according to the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Law, which is a necessary procedural justice.

II. The required administrative approval procedures by law

Media reports have it that after tigers were hunted in Mishan City, Heilongjiang Province, and that their DNA would be extracted and studied. Extracting DNA is actually an act of "scientific research" and must be carried out in accordance with the law.

Article 27 of the Wildlife Protection Law stipulates: "The sale and purchase of wildlife under special state protection or wildlife products thereof shall be prohibited.”

"Where the sale, purchase or utilization of wildlife under state protection or the products thereof is necessary for scientific research, artificial propagation, exhibition, relics protection or other special purposes, the unit concerned must apply for approval by the department of wildlife administration under the government of the relevant provinces, autonomous regions or municipalities directly under the Central Government or by a unit authorized by the same department, and must apply for and use the specified logo to ensure that the wild animals and their products could be traced, except that the State Council applies other regulations to the competent authorities.”

That is to say, if the local authorities need to conduct "scientific research" on the tiger, they must go through administrative approval procedures in accordance with Article 27 of Law on Wildlife Protection. Otherwise, these actions are illegal.

III The tiger should be wild-released as soon as possible

How should we deal with the wild tiger straying into a village? It is a common sense that we should drive it away from the village. Tigers are scary, but they are also an important part of the ecosystem and should be given special protection. There is no reason to hunt and imprison tigers because of our fear. There are a lot of wild animals on the planet that are scary. Are we going to hunt them and lock them up? In fact, tigers often show up in and around Mishan City, Heilongjiang Province, especially in the nearby nature reserves. Some tigers have been living there for a long time, and the local authorities have asked the villagers to move away from the nature reserves to protect the wildlife habitat.

For decades, a so-called "wildlife rescue center" in a certain southern province has caged thousands of pangolins saved from illegal hunting or from law enforcement confiscation, but the center has never released wild pangolins to nature in a timely manner. Thus tens of thousands of pangolins in the rescue center were caged to death, which made the "wildlife rescue center" become "wild animals grave". This is a lesson for all of us. It is wrong to hunt and catch the wild tiger straying into a village in Mishan City, Heilongjiang Province. We hope that the local authorities will later handle the matter in a scientific way and release the tiger to the wild without delay. The later tiger will be released, the more unnecessary damage will be done to the tiger.

Transltor/Li Kexin   Proofread/YX

Original Chinese article

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/367518605

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