Perhaps it’s heartening for animal protection activists that people care! A photographer at Dishui Lake, located just past Pudong International Airport, recently snapped photos of a man hunting Chinese egrets and posted them to the web, calling the actions “heartless” and “really wicked.”

A netizen called 3J wrote that the incident happened on October 1 in “one of the best known bird-watching points in Shanghai – Dishui Hu.”



“3J” said he had found an egret very close to where people were sitting, and had slowly creeped toward it to get a better picture. “Unexpectedly, on the other side of us was a cold faced killer, who was armed with slingshots and came and shot down the cute egret.”

3J added that the man turned a deaf ear to his surprised cry and “all I could do was take pictures of him, and give them to you to human flesh search.”

The offender has yet to be identified, but he was wearing a blue shirt and sunglasses. To hunt, he used what seems like a homemade slingshot, managing to take down one egret with a rock. That’s pretty terrible, but man, it seems like it requires some skill.

Egrets are classified as a “vulnerable” species and belong to the second class of protected animals in China. By violating hunting regulations in the Nanhu Dongtan wildlife sanctuary (where Dishui Lake is located), the man risks anything from a fine to three years imprisonment.