Poaching a ‘major, overlooked threat’ to biodiversity in China, study finds

More than one-fifth of amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal species in China are being poached, mostly for food and traditional medicines, according to an analysis of court convictions for illegal hunting.

Researchers looked at more than 9,200 convictions from 2014 to 2020 for the study. They found that just 5 per cent of them – mainly in the eastern and central parts of China – accounted for 90 per cent of the animals that were hunted, pointing to large commercial poaching operations.

The team from Sun Yat-sen University in southern China, and Princeton University and the University of Tennessee in the United States warned that poaching “has the potential to foster zoonotic disease outbreaks, especially in hunting hotspots”.

They said one-quarter of traded mammals globally hosted three-quarters of known zoonotic viruses.

Their analysis of wildlife-related court convictions in China – involving more than 3 million individual animals and more than 670 species – was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday.

“Our results suggest that illegal hunting is a major, overlooked threat to biodiversity throughout China,” the researchers said.

“It is now clear that illegal hunting within China involves hundreds of common and threatened species, occurs throughout the country, and has the potential to cause major losses of biodiversity and significant risks to public health.”

China is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries – home to more than 3,000 vertebrate species with one-fifth of them not found anywhere else.