Word: panda
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...Postcard: Woolong" [April 30]: For a species that numbers only 1,600 and has a habitat of barely 5,000 sq. mi., reintroducing pandas into the wild might turn out to be an important complement to the more basic need to conserve habitat. China deserves credit for making the world aware of the panda's plight and for getting East and West to cooperate in saving the animal. The $4 million that four U.S. zoos contribute annually to saving the pandas' habitat is a piddling amount compared with the need, but China has responded by pouring billions into a "Grain...
Donald Lindburg, North American Coordinator for the Giant Panda Association of Zoos & Aquariums, SAN DIEGO...
...Giant pandas are like a boyfriend or girlfriend who is staggeringly good looking but otherwise brainless and self-absorbed. Pandas often have to be artificially inseminated because so many have lost the most primal of urges. When pandas reproduce, many cubs have to be cared for by zookeepers because the mothers take no interest in them. Over time, pandas have worked themselves into an impossible ecological niche. They eat almost nothing but bamboo shoots and then, depending upon their appetite at the moment, only certain varieties. If the right kind of bamboo is unavailable, they will starve to death...
...health of the population also calls into question the center's practice of reintroducing captive-bred pandas into the wild. The fate of 4-year-old Xiang Xiang, a former Wolong resident, has added to the controversy. Having had his every need anticipated by a loyal band of caregivers, the baffled bear received the shock of his young life last spring. He was dropped into the middle of thick bamboo forest, making him the first giant panda bred in captivity to be released by Chinese scientists into the wild. Although he had received some survival training, Xiang Xiang soon found...
Maybe producing pandas and then tossing them into the wild doesn't make sense. According to Jim Harkness, the former WWF chief in China, a range of factors drive the breeding program, notably "the myth that captive breeding will save the panda." The program is a source of national pride; plus there's the fuzzy economics: zoos donate money to China in exchange for the right to display pandas. In the U.S. four zoos, including the National Zoo in Washington, are each paying $10 million over a decade for their Wolong-bred bears...