China’s Conservation Strategy Must Reconcile Its Contemporary Wildlife Use and Trade Practices

Abstract

China’s supply-side conservation efforts in the past decades have led to two bewildering juxtapositions: a rapidly expanding farming industry vs. overexploitation, which remains one of the main threats to Chinese vertebrates. COVID-19 was also the second large-scale zoonotic disease outbreak since the 2002 SARS. Here, we reflect on China’s supply-side conservation strategy by examining its policies, laws, and practices concerning wildlife protection and utilization, and identify the unintended consequences that likely have undermined this strategy and made it ineffective in protecting threatened wildlife and preventing zoonotic diseases. We call for China to overhaul its conservation strategy to limit and phase out risky and unsustainable utilization, while improving legislation and enforcement to establish full chain-of-custody regulation over existing utilization.

Combining data from consumers and traditional medicine practitioners to provide a more complete picture of Chinese bear bile markets

“…Crudge et al, 2020). Defining legality by source is therefore not always straightforward, and in pre-COVID China, rapid expansion of wildlife farming and trade, coupled with the ineffectiveness of China's regulatory system to tell wild-sourced and captive-bred wildlife apart, created a loophole where some farms laundered wild animals, and local markets sold illegal wildlife (Jiao & Lee, 2021). This trade threatens wild bear populations across their range, especially the Asiatic black bear Ursus thibetanus, which is the prime target for the gallbladder market and the only legally farmed species in China (Garshelis & Steinmetz, 2016).…”

Perceptions of COVID-19 origins and China’s wildlife policy reforms

“…Wildlife trade and consumption in China has a significant impact on the conservation status of numerous species ( Jiao and Lee, 2021 , Zhang et al, 2008 , Zhang and Yin, 2014 ). Wildlife trade and consumption also has implications for the transmission of zoonotic disease.…”

“…Notwithstanding the COVID-19 pandemic, a host of other zoonotic diseases can be contracted through the trade and consumption of wild animals ( Bell et al, 2004 , Murray et al, 2015 , Shi and Hu, 2008 ). China has historically promoted the intensive farming of numerous species – many with a high risk of zoonotic spill over, such as pangolins, raccoon dogs, and civets ( Whitfort, 2021 ) – and the country continues to import large numbers of farmed and wild-caught animals ( Coals et al, 2020 , Jiao and Lee, 2021 ).…”

Support for wildlife consumption bans and policies in China post-Covid-19

“…The proliferation of wildlife farms can have severe and unintended consequences for the spread of zoonotic diseases (Jiao & Lee, 2021), as wildlife farms are both suppliers to wet markets and also potential sources of disease in their own right (Petrovan et al, 2021). Although the February 2020 ban applies to farmed terrestrial wildlife (You, 2020), addressing the wildlife farming industry in China and its potential links to zoonotic diseases remains a significant logistical challenge (Wang et al, 2020).…”