ON THURSDAY, the provincial disciplinary and supervision commission of Hubei province, announced that it had punished 15 local officials for constructing a bridge that caused the deaths of 36 Chinese sturgeons, which are a critically endangered species. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

In September 2018, when a company was constructing the local Miyue Bridge in Jingzhou, Hubei province, a nearby Chinese sturgeon breeding base found that their Chinese sturgeons suffered and were jumping out of the water.

An investigation concluded that it was the noise of the construction that disturbed the fish. However, the local government upon receiving the investigation report simply passed the buck from one department to another. The construction did not stop until one month later, but the tragedy had already happened because 36 Chinese sturgeons, whose number is lower than 1,000 nationwide, died.

A later probe even found that the construction project had not undergone any environmental impact assessment. The case reflects the lack of any environmental protection awareness among many local officials, whose sole concern is GDP growth. The construction of the bridge will probably result in tens of millions of yuan in GDP growth. Compared to that, in their minds, the lives of a few Chinese sturgeons are expendable.

For a long time, wildlife protection and other aspects of environmental protection have been considered a job that belongs to environmental departments only. In this case, the local government of Jingzhou received complaints first, but they simply passed them on.

Even when experts reached their conclusions, the bridge construction still continued. It did not stop until the media reported on the incident.

This is the first of its kind, in which local officials have been punished for failing to properly protect an endangered species. More important, the majority of the 15 punished officials serve in administrative offices, not just the one responsible for wildlife protection. In other words, wildlife protection is considered a job for every department.

Let's hope it will guide more officials nationwide to have a deeper understanding of the importance of wildlife protection.