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TEN PEOPLE HAVE been detained in China over the killing of an endangered wild panda for its meat and fur, state media said.
A panda skin was discovered in December along with 9.75 kilograms of meat, four bones and a gallbladder, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
While there is a thriving black market trade in exotic animal parts in China, it is unusual to hear of panda meat being sold.
Police found two brothers had shot the animal in forest near Zhaotong, a poverty-stricken city in China’s Yunnan province, it said.
Images showed the black and white skin — said to be that of an adult female — laid out on a floor alongside a tape measure.
CCTV said a person who bought the animal’s meat from the brothers had also been detained. The identities of the other seven people held, and their connections to the case, were not stated.
Under Chinese law, killing protected animals such as pandas can result in a jail sentence of up to 10 years.
China is home to 1,864 wild giant pandas according to state-run media, with a government agency crediting conservation measures for an increase of 17 percent over the decade to 2013.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature classes them as “endangered”.
The giant panda’s natural habitat mostly lies in mountainous southwestern China. They have a notoriously low reproductive rate and are under pressure from factors such as habitat loss.
- © AFP 2015.
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Hard enough for that species without that carry on
Humans…… Worst species on the planet. Shame on the world and how we are treating our beautiful animals. Rip sweet bear. Sorry this world failed you. :(
In Ireland, that would probably be a €50 fine and a day out in court.. Or else you’d just get away with it
Unless there’s been an unreported break-in at Dublin Zoo lately, no comparable incident has happened here.
Well the poisoning and shooting of endangered eagles goes completely uninvestigated and unpunished here so it’s safe to say @lad comment is actually very accurate.
Eye for an Eye! Don’t kill them 1st, just skin them alive!
Fair enough if they eat it I guess, no better or worse than beef, just because it’s cute doesn’t make it less tasty.
Cattle are not almost exsint
Extinct extinct
Take into consideration the poverty stricken population of the area, the authority dealing with this case should temper justice and mitigate the punishment of this particular crime.
If we bred cattle like pandas there would be plenty of tasty panda burgers to go around
Yes Alfred. We need to protect endangered animals but it looks here like they needed the meat and fur for survival purposes. Not quite the same as that woman recently posing with a giraffe she had just shot for FUN
But don’t worry about the Elephant’s or the Rhino’s that these S cum bags are murdering on a daily basis in Africa. I mean who gives a damn, right? Hope they rot. Pond S cum.
Savages :(
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