A villager has been sentenced to one year in prison by a Court in South China’s Guangdong Province on Thursday for capturing and killing a rare two-meter-long snake.

The man surnamed Wu captured the 10-kg python in a rural area of Fengkai County with the help of another man at around 11 a.m. on Dec. 15, 2016, the county court said.

Wu explained that he paid the man 47 dollars (300 yuan) to help capture the snake, and also killed it later that day.

Police arrested the snake killer after a fellow villager uploaded a photograph of Wu catching the snake, on social networking app WeChat.

The python breed is on the first class state protection list.

Fengkai is home to several rare wildlife species, such as pythons and monitor lizards which is located at the border of Guangdong and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region

The county has two nature reserves.