BEIJING — A proposed revision to China‘s Wildlife Protection Law is being criticized by conservationists who fear it could legitimize the commercial exploitation of endangered species, such as tigers, bears and pangolins.

“This is not a step forward,” said Toby Zhang, director of Ta Foundation, an animal protection organization based in Beijing. “This is a surrender to the wrong and the benighted.”

The draft legislation would be the first major revision of the 1989 law, which animal welfare advocates had long faulted as providing inadequate safeguards for wildlife, and some proposed changes have won their praise. For example, the bill opens with a mention of its intent to protect not just animals but also their habitats. And it states for the first time that the state has a responsibility to help maintain biodiversity.

The draft legislation was made public on Jan. 1 and open for comment until last Friday.

But where the existing law is vague about the legality of trading and breeding endangered species for food and medicine — a situation critics said opened too many loopholes for animal exploitation and abuse — the proposed revisions make explicit that endangered species are “natural resources” that can be legally bred in captivity for commercial purposes. And it shifts the power for licensing these activities from the central government to provincial ones, which critics say are more likely to bend to local economic interests.