ON WEDNESDAY, an online food livestreamer named Outdoor Eater posted a video clip online, in which he pulled a snow lotus out of the ground in Tibet and boiled it with his noodles. The damage done to the local environment is more than he could imagine. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

Outdoor Eater might not know what he dug up is not an ordinary snow lotus, but an extremely rare species Saussurea medusa, more commonly called "Medusa snow rabbit".

The exact number existing in the wild is unknown, but scientists believe that the species is on the brink of extinction and domestic law has forbidden people from collecting them for private use since 2000. To quote Gu Yourong, a botanical scholar from Capital Normal University, "even botanical scientists refrain from collecting it for scientific use".

The "Medusa snow rabbit" generally only grows at more than 4,500 meters above the sea level. In order to survive the extreme cold and fierce wind at these altitudes, it grows thick hair on the outside like a snow rabbit. The thick hair protects the plant from the cold, but so curbs its photosynthesis that it often has to grow around six to eight years before its only blossoming in life.

Only very few plants and animals survive in such an environment; Therefore, each "Medusa snow rabbit" is an essential part of a fragile ecosystem around it. When someone digs one out of the ground, he/she not only makes the plant's own years of efforts in vain, but also threatens the ecological balance of maybe one square kilometer around it.

For a long time, many people intentionally collected "Medusa snow rabbit" to sell as herbal plants to tourists, even though their herbal effects are not confirmed. As a result, the species has long been considered rare. The Outdoor Eater has already deleted his video and apologized for his wrongdoing, and we hope the case will remind more people to know the rarity of the plant.

"Medusa snow rabbit" is not the only plant that suffers from the greed of certain people. The State Council has forbidden people from privately collecting wild snow lotus, but many people still collect and sell them, because they carry a sense of mystery. Worse, some restaurants hype up their rarity and illegally sell them at high prices. It is time the law offered stricter protection of these rare plants for the ecological environment.