Letters | Time to update Hong Kong’s wildlife protection law
Readers discuss stronger legal teeth for wildlife protection, ear acupuncture, and ethical evolution
Two foundational priorities stand out: amending conservation policies and protecting endangered wildlife. These are not the most fashionable projects but they are essential lifelines for our natural heritage.
This urgency is underscored by the 2025 WWF-Hong Kong report on Hong Kong biodiversity, which found 26 per cent of assessed fauna threatened with local extinction. Quiet tragedies drive this statistic: relentless hunting of species, from critically endangered turtles for the black market to tiny shrimps for aquarium hobbyists, is steadily eroding our ecosystems.
While amendments have since banned hunting, expanded the list of protected species and added some protection measures, the law is still riddled with loopholes: capturing unprotected species by hand is legal; scientific names of protected species are outdated; globally threatened marine life like whale sharks and horseshoe crabs are omitted; only one insect is listed; and freshwater fish – one of our most threatened wildlife groups – receive no protection.