Word: pandas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Chinese man with the cruel face was adamant. He would not show the visitor the panda pelt being offered for sale without a $10,000 deposit. But perhaps she would be interested in a better deal: two live young pandas, chained and ready to go, for just $112,000. Of course, he had leopard and tiger pelts as well, if she were interested. Eight smugglers gathered around them in the dimly lighted, smoke-filled room in Quanzhou, an ancient seaport on the narrow waterway between mainland China and Taiwan; each one was seeking a $19,000 cut just for witnessing...
...animal is more prized than China's giant panda, a national symbol. Only about 1,000 remain in the wild, largely because of the disappearance of their bamboo grazing grounds and their limited ability to adapt to change. But natural dangers have been surpassed by human ones. Lured by the huge prices that pandas bring -- from $5,000 to $112,000 in a country where the average monthly wage is $29 -- poachers are closing in on this rare animal, tracking it down even in China's nature preserves. During the course of her travels, the WWF investigator saw two panda...
...Chinese government cracked down on such trafficking in 1989, when it passed new wildlife-protection laws prohibiting hunting and trading of endangered animals, with stiff penalties for violators. Last year two panda traders were executed. But even the threat of capital punishment has failed to slow the poachers. Since the laws were enacted, more than 2,000 illegal killings have been reported, and enforcement of the measures is lax. "The government is interested in protection, but it has too many other things to take care of," explains one exasperated Chinese conservationist. Says the WWF investigator: "There is little effective control...
...entering a new phase of environmental studies and activism," Wilson says. "Conservation is more linked to economic development than opposed to it, focused on biological diversity rather than just individual star species such as the panda and the bald eagle and tilted southward to put increasing emphasis on tropical countries, where by far the most severe environmental problems exist...