New legal interpretation on wildlife protection issued
Beijing: Buying or selling endangered wild animals raised through mass artificial breeding programmes is not to be treated as a crime, a recent judicial interpretation said.
The judicial interpretation, issued by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate last month, clarified the application of law in handling criminal cases on the destruction of wildlife resources, and came into effect on April 9.
The crimes of destroying wildlife resources involve smuggling precious animals and products made from such animals; illegally fishing aquatic wildlife; harming precious and endangered wildlife; illegal hunting; and illegally hunting, purchasing, transporting or selling terrestrial wildlife, it said.
The provisions on wildlife protection have been revised in the criminal law, and took effect in March 2021, so the relevant judicial interpretation needs to be improved to ensure the correct, comprehensive and unified implementation of the law.
In addition, cases involving wildlife resources have become more complex in recent years, and the previous judicial interpretations cannot adapt to the actual situation, said Gao Jingfeng, head of the SPP’S Law Policy Research Office.
Artificially bred wild animals also belong to wildlife resources and should be protected.
However, adopting the same standard for those animals as with mature and stable artificial breeding technology is not conducive to economic and social development and wildlife protection, Gao said.
On April 20, the Lingcheng District People’s Court in the city of Dezhou, Shandong province, issued a criminal ruling allowing prosecutors to drop charges against Duan Jiguo and Wang Meilan, who were accused of buying and selling artificially bred parrots, because the law and judicial interpretation changed during the proceedings.
In November 2019, Duan sold 46 rare and endangered parrots under key state protection, to Wang and others without permission from forestry authorities.
From August 2018 to November 2019, Wang broke the law by buying 38 endangered parrots. Wang sold 39 artificially bred parrots to others.
In December 2021, they were each sentenced to three years in prison for “endangering precious and endangered wildlife”. The two appealed the decision.
In February 2022, the Dezhou Intermediate Court returned the case to the Lingcheng court for retrial. In early April, the SPC and SPP issued the judicial interpretation, and the district court allowed prosecutors to drop charges against the two and changed the guilty verdict of the first instance.
The document also clarified that crimes against wildlife resources are no longer judged solely on the number of animals involved, but take the value of the damaged wildlife as the standard of conviction and sentencing, to better match crimes with punishments, Gao said, adding that the “value” here includes not only the market value, but also the value determined by a comprehensive evaluation of preciousness, endangerment and ecological value.