Objectives Based on the current judicial practice of the crime of endangering national key protected plants, this study analyzed the shortcomings in the criminal regulation of wild plant crimes in China and proposed corresponding legislative improvements, aiming to strengthen the legal foundation for wild plant conservation and advance the implementation of ecological civilization values.

Methods Taking Article 344 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, the "Crime of Endangering National Key Protected Plants," as the entry point, this study examines the criminal regulation of wild plant crimes in China. Using the PKULaw platform, judicial cases related to this crime were retrieved, and 380 valid sample cases were selected through the PKULaw Association function. Based on this, an empirical analysis was conducted on the types of criminal acts, sentencing outcomes, and sentencing factors in the sample cases.

Results The current judicial practice of the Crime of Endangering National Key Protected Plants exhibited issues such as an imbalance in the types of criminal acts, lenient sentencing that failed to match the severity of the crime, and insufficient pre-crime prevention. From a legislative perspective, the main reasons included gaps in the connection between administrative and criminal law, the lack of judicial recognition of multiple ecological legal interests, unreasonable penalty settings, and inadequate cross-departmental coordination mechanism.

Conclusions Based on an analysis of the issues and their causes, targeted recommendations for improving relevant legislation are proposed: to formulate the specialized law or establish the ecological environment code; to clarify multi-criminal ecological legal interests as the sentencing criteria; to add supplementary penalty measures; to establish robust multi-departmental coordination mechanisms.