Freeing Captive Animals: Starting with Goodwill and Ending up with Consequences?

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Canada sees giant goldfish frequently, which causes serious damage to the ecological environment in water, thus experts call on not to free domesticated pets to the wild.

Kate Wilson, Canadian Expert in marine lives said that once the lives which have been reared in the fish bowl are freed to the wild, they could play and forage unrestrainedly, so after eating crazily, the goldfishes can be too large for us to imagine.

"Even if the goldfishes die after being freed, they may also carry foreign diseases or parasites."

Not only Canada, but also all over the world that see frequent accidents of freed animals in recent years, which have pushed the goodwill action of freeing captive to the cusp of the public opinion.

What is freeing captive animals?

As the name suggests, freeing captive animals is to release captured or domesticated animals to nature and let them live a wild life.

Freeing captive animals was done by the Han Nationality in the ancient time, and can be traced back to the Period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States. One chapter of Liezi says, "I free animals on the first day of the new year to represent my grace." "One of the guests said, ‘people know that you want to free animals, so they compete capturing them. It is better to forbid them to capture animals. To capture and then release is just getting a balance that merits equal faults. Jianzi said,"Right!"

As early as in the Period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States, China has the habit of freeing captive animals in the special days, and even the situation of capturing fishing and birds specially for freeing appeared. The ancient people also had the habit of praying to celebrate by freeing animals and now in some areas the habit still exists. However, it was only after Buddhism was introduced to China, especially after the argument of "the Six Great Divisions in the Wheel of Karma " was widely accepted, that freeing captive animals becomes a custom in Chinese folk and continues to today.

In addition to the advocating of Buddhism, mercy and compassion for little animals also make some people join the group of freeing animals. From the "benevolence" of King Xuan of Qi to "kill sheep but not cattle", to Bai Juyi’s anthropomorphic advice,"Don’t think that the lives of animals are tiny, since they have the same flesh and skin. Please don’t hurt the bird on the branches, since baby birds may be waiting for it in the nest", from the passion for pets to the mercy to the "food" on the table, from the appeal of animal protecting organizations to the organized or not organized behavior of freeing animals all over the world: we have to say that people’s aspiration for good deeds and the awakening awareness of animal protection has made freeing captive animals a universal behavior.

In recent years, public promotion has also given sufficient attention to animal protection. Media continue to crack down on behaviors such as slaughtering dogs, abusing chicken, killing elephants for ivory and getting bear gall while the bear is alive by reporting, and all kinds of movies which show human kill animals cruelty and the adorability of animals also stimulate people from the emotional point, and the textbooks strive to arouse children’s awareness of protection of animals, beginning from all kinds of endangered animals.

However, facing the current chaos in freeing animals, we want to ask, whether such unpractical publicity of freeing animals and animal protection has gone to the wrong direction?

The many hidden dangers of mal-freeing of animals

The vigorous development a consciousness or action cannot be considered a bad thing from all perspectives. But Lao-tzu said "Danger is the next neighbour to security." In view of this, problems are more likely to happen when something is developing prosperously.

On October 15, 2011, more than 300 Buddhist citizens of in Yuelu Mountain released 500 birds they bought. However, the bumps of the journey made many birds exhausted and even hurt, so they could not fly far after being freed, and those heavily-wounded died directly.

In November 2011, in the cement road, fields, forests and pond ditches of Weishantun and Taoyuantun of Taoyuan Village, Shulan, Jilin Province, snakes appeared from time to time. According to local villagers, most of them were viper called "soil ball". It happened because some people released snakes on the national day holiday near Taoyuan Village.

On September 1st 2012, some dead fish with their white belly turned upside appeared on the surface of Qianhai of the Shichahai. According to nearby residents, in the morning before the day, someone freed thousands of kilograms of such fish. However, these catfish are raised by man, not the local residents of Shichahai, and were unable to adapt to the water environment here, so they died soon after being released.

In April 2015, the number of turtles of the 120-suqare meter turtle pool next to the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas of Lotus Lake of Kaohsiung, Taiwan soared from 60 to 600 due to people’s long-term freeing of turtles. Under the circumstance of "turtles overflow", most of them had mottle and pus in their shells and suffered from "turtle plague".

On April 12, 2015, a female bought a 25.3-pound tortoise outside Kaifu Temple, and freed it to Xiangjiang River. On February 5, 2015, fishermen Xu Zongyuan captured an 8-jin chelydra; On May 14, in Longqiao Village, Bixi New District a chelydra of more than 5 jins was found. As for this, experts of forestry station reminded citizens that chelydra and other exotic species have large impact to the local ecological balance and should not be freed easily after being found.

On the evening of June 16, 2015, in the Yuanyang Lake of Zhaolin Park of Harbin, a chelydra of the size of a basin ate a baby mandarin duck secretly when its mother did not notice, and it was the third baby mandarin duck that had been eaten by it. Some people released that the chelydra was freed by an old lady.

In the lower reaches and the estuary area of the Yellow River, the ecological system is complicated and diverse, and the aquatic lives are rich and unique. However, according to the study of Freshwater Fisheries Resources and Environment Office of Shandong Province in 2013, foreign hybrid carp, mirror carp, crucian carp, hybrid sturgeon, and clarias lazerahas have settled in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and foreign Brazil turtle, Kirschner crawfish (crayfish) and bullfrogs account for a large proportion in the river from Juancheng to Dong’e, Shandong Province, foreign chelydra even appear frequently in the river from Gaoqing to Kenli, Shandong Province. Freeing animals is the "backstage driving force".

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In recent years, with the increasing popularity of freeing animals, not only the number people and animals involved, but also the number of the proportional accidents increased.

Buddhism talks about letting all go with their nature, and many people did so while freeing the animals. What to free, where to free and how to free are all with more or less randomness, and some people even do it while travelling for a "good omen". They do not consider the impact before and after the freeing, so deaths of freed animals, attacks on local animals or people, biological invasion and destruction of the local ecological balance often happen.

According to incomplete statistics, in Tencent QQ platform alone there are almost 400 groups (only the groups with "freeing" in the name and established for the purpose of freeing are counted in the statistics) of freeing animals in China, group size ranges from 40, 50 to 1000 people. These netizens get together because of their same of close location, and they organize regular freeing activities. However, according to the introduction of the groups, only a few groups have clear requirements for the time, place and species, most of the groups take the mechanism of random and letting all go with nature. As to whether there is enough professional guidance in the groups, it is unknown. Even organized groups are like this, the individuals of different places who do the freeing often touch the bottom line.

Among the many consequences, the invasion of foreign species is undoubtedly the most common, most serious, most impactful and the one which is most difficult to solve. Many invasions of foreign species have caused very serious problems. They destroy the original ecological balance in the region, cause serious loss of biodiversity, affect the safety of agriculture and forestry and result in a huge ecological and economic losses. Part of the released lives had hybridization with the local species, resulting in invasion of genes and leading to the degradation of the quality of local species, which difficult to deal with. Take the invasion of solidago decurrens lour of Canada as an example, the harm has long been shown, so that every year a lot of manpower and resources are put in to clean them away. The difficulty to prevent and control, and the great cost has been a serious lesson. At present, the case that foreign species invade and destroy the local ecology has happened to many places in the world. In the past it was caused by accident, but now they are mainly caused by human error.

In addition to the visible invasion of released lives themselves, wild animals and domesticated animals may also carry the bacteria and viruses harmful to local animal and human inside or on the surface of their body. The invasion of these microorganisms will also cause many deaths of local lives and break the balance of ecological environment.