Some animal lovers recently bought thousands of snakes at pet markets in Beijing and released them near a village in Xinglong county in neighboring Hebei province. However, their good intentions may have had the opposite effect than intended, says an article in Beijing News. Excerpts:

More than 10 people set the snakes free near Mao'erdong village, which frightened local villagers who soon mobilized themselves to kill or drive away the snakes.

To set free captive animals is in line with Buddhist thought, which suggests all creatures including humans are equal. But we still can't agree with these snake-releasers' deeds because they violated the relevant regulations and lacked professional guidance.

According to the Regulations for the Implementation on the Protection of Terrestrial Wildlife, those who want to release wildlife from other regions should get approval from the forestry authorities in the area where they plan to set them free.

These Beijing animal lovers obviously didn't follow the law this time, and there have been many similar violations elsewhere. Without professional guidance, releasing animals into the wild may harm the animals, local people and local ecology.

In fact, hundreds of the released snakes were killed by local villagers, who had no other choice as they didn't know if the snakes were poisonous. That's probably not what the people who released the snakes wanted to happen.

Moreover, snakes are a species on a relatively high position on the food chain, and releasing such a large number of them is bound to upset the local ecological balance. This in turn might affect agricultural production, as the number of pest predators is likely to drop.

(China Daily 06/14/2012 page9)