A Buddhist practice of freeing captive animals into the wild has stirred up a controversy in China after officials found that creatures like bedbugs and snakes were released into the wild.
Postings of micro-blogger “cora liebo” narrating the list of animals “released” in the southwestern province of Yunnan have left jaws dropped all over China. One such posting in April listed bedbugs among the creatures released, along with 58 kilograms of snakes.
These releases have been going on for some years and have included many bizarre species, alien to Yunnan, including the notoriously invasive apple snail, which has caused severe damage to rice crops across Asia.
Rao Dingqi, an entomologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, described how alien species could damage Yunnan’s fragile ecosystem.
“Taking golden apple snails as an example. It is a species from South America that has strong adaptive and reproductive capacity.
“It will damage paddy field ecology, affect the growth of crops and will reduce the population of native species, perhaps even to extinction,” he was quoted as saying state-run Xinhua news agency.
The forest public security bureau in the provincial capital Kunming are investigating the case. Releasing animals into the wild dates back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC- 220 AD).