On the afternoon of August 26, 2022, Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), participated in the online discussion on the topic: Is It Worth the Loss of Draining the Lake to Round up Strange Fish - Alligator Gar(Atractosteus spatula) in the Red Star News Live Room.

In this live broadcast, three guests participated in the discussion: Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary-General of CBCGDF, Dr. Gu Dangen, a post-scientist in the prevention and control of alien species in the modern agricultural industry technology system (bulk freshwater fish system), and Zhou Zhuocheng, deputy director of the China Fisheries Association's Native Water Biology and Water Ecology Committee.

During the discussion, Dr. Zhou Jinfeng talked about how to practice ecological civilization starting from alien pets and aquatic life.

Dr. Zhou Jinfeng pointed out that most of the ordinary consumers occasionally heard the advertising promotion and bought exotic pets. After buying them, they couldn't bear to kill them because they couldn't keep them, didn't want to keep them, and couldn't find anyone to keep them.What should we do? Therefore, we firmly support legislation to further regulate human consumption behavior.

Building a new civilization requires sweeping changes. What does civilization include? Politics, laws, institutions, norms, standards, culture, art, ethics, morals, fashion, etc. We must comprehensively promote the construction of ecological civilization, which will inevitably require the introduction of corresponding new laws and regulations. In fact, we already have a large number of new laws and regulations promoting the supervision work, such as the ten-year ban on fishing in the Yangtze River, which is an important positive protective measure to promote our ecological protection.

We advocate that industries and departments should not be allowed to arbitrarily publicize along the lines of industrial civilization, and there will be no harm if there is no buying and selling. If everyone still brazenly advertises, pursues, encourages, and promotes, it will lead everyone to a detour.

Today, scientists have confirmed that due to human activities, the earth has entered the sixth extinction stage, and one of the important influencing factors includes the threat posed by invasive alien species to the ecosystem, biological security and even human ecological civilization. The entire earth's life system has collapsed again. The first five extinctions on Earth were all caused by natural causes, but this time - the sixth mass extinction we have entered today was entirely caused by humans, for which scientists are conclusive.

The collapse of today's ecosystem, invasive alien species is a very important factor, and a more important reason is the endless luxury of human beings. Eating is not enough, maintaining life is not enough, but also to satisfy extravagant desires.

The Earth has no way to meet our extravagant expectations which are causing mankind to enter the sixth stage of mass extinction, so we have to start a new civilization. So what is the new civilization? It is to change our improper way of production and life. Humans should not ask for endless demands from nature and life like this, and then talk about respecting them.

Keeping exotic pets and other animals at home, no matter how nice you are to them (allowing them to enjoy a comfortable air-conditioned room, suitable water temperature), it is not really respected in essence, because it is not a natural existence for them. It is in the wild, in nature as the real home of wild animals. For them, nature is a good place.

In terms of human survival, industrial civilization is a great contributor and creator, supporting the 7.7 billion people on earth today. But today we want to start ecological civilization, we want to change, change this unnecessary destruction and extravagance of ecology and life. There are not so many natural resources that we can satisfy such extravagant demands. We can no longer build aquariums, not one of them! The aquariums that have been built and operated need to seek a way of transformation. Some scientists in the world are already studying feasible plans for the transformation of aquariums.. In Shanghai, there is a successful precedent for aquariums to re-introduce marine life into the ocean.

This is also done internationally: re-wild wildlife, and make a detailed timetable to announce to the world how long the zoo will be closed. This is the trend of human civilization, just like the ancient Colosseum has long been closed because humans can no longer do this. Under the advocacy of the new civilization, we must earnestly learn what is ecological civilization. Keeping wild animals in captivity at home is not ecological civilization; Only allowing them to return to their natural habitats is ecological civilization.

(Photo：Wikipedia)

(Photo: IUCN)

Original Chinese Article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ocVdYX1QUwRq-kp-ZZlmlA

Translator:Daisy

Checked by Lucy

Editor:Maggie

Contact: v10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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