Cashing in on pandas (and their
poop) By Pallavi Aiyar
CHENGDU - With all the playfulness of a
litter of kittens, six giant pandas in a pen swat
at each other between mouthfuls of bamboo. These
are juveniles, about a year old and part of a
generation of panda baby-boomers born last year.
The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base,
where the cubs are on display, boasted a record 12
newborn animals in 2006, all of which survived.
To put this in perspective, 12 captive
pandas were born in all of
China in 2005 and only nine
in 2000.
The Chengdu base, China's
second-largest panda-breeding center, was not
alone in enjoying a bounty of babies last year.
Countrywide, 34 cubs were born in captivity in
2006, 30 of which survived, bringing China's
current population of captive-bred giant pandas to
220.
With the panda baby boom, experts say
that the creature, for decades one of the world's
most endangered species, is well on the path to
flourishing.
The Chinese government has
set a goal of 300 captive-born pandas over the
next few years. This would be enough, according to
Hou Rong, a senior researcher at the Chengdu base,
to allow the captive-born-panda population to be
self-sustaining and guarantee its survival for
several decades to come.
Hou explains that
the burgeoning panda population in Chengdu has
been boosted by improvements in breeding and
raising techniques that have advanced to the point
where more than 60% of female pandas in captivity
now give birth regularly, up from a mere 33% in
the 1990s. The survival rate of cubs has also more
than doubled over the past decade to about 70%.
In captivity, pandas are known for their
low sex drive and shyness, all of which makes
breeding them challenging. The process is
complicated by the fact that female pandas have an
extremely short - one to five days - window of
fertility each year.
In their quest to
increase the panda population, Chengdu researchers
have resorted to virtually every trick in the
book, including feeding Viagra to the males,
showing potential couples "panda porn" (videos of
animals mating in the forest), and artificial
insemination.
Combined with a switch to a
more nutritious diet - while pandas in the wild
subsist almost wholly on a diet of bamboo, it has
been found that those in captivity require
nutritional supplements - the new breeding
techniques have been so successful that the
Chengdu base is now facing a different kind of
problem: overcrowding.
Space was the least
of the base's worries when it was established back
in 1987 with a total of six pandas. But today the
center is bursting to capacity with a 66-strong
animal population that is constantly expanding.
According to Liang Kuixin, the head keeper
at the base, it costs 50,000 yuan (US$6,600) per
adult panda a year for food and medical expenses
alone. Thus for the Chengdu center the growing
animal population has led to the fresh challenge
of rising costs.
While about half of the
center's financing comes from government funds,
the remaining 50% must be generated by the base
itself. Luckily for the base, the panda's
universal appeal generates considerable revenue
through visitors' fees. In 2006 the Chengdu center
entertained 300,000 visitors, each of whom paid 30
yuan apiece to view the pandas.
The
commercial spinoffs from the pandas don't stop
with admission fees. Inside, tourists may pony up
an additional 1,000 yuan to be photographed
holding a one-year-old cub, and Liang says an
average of 30-40 visitors do so daily.
But
the center is breaking new commercial ground with
its latest fundraising effort: panda-poop
products. Each panda generates an average of 20-30
kilograms of waste every day, largely consisting
of undigested bamboo, which the breeding center is
recycling into panda-poop paper, photo frames, and
other uniquely crafted souvenirs.
But by
far the most commercially lucrative panda-based
fundraiser is leasing the animals to foreign zoos,
which pay up to $1 million a year for the
opportunity. More than 30 pandas are currently on
loan outside China, about 10 of them from Chengdu.
China's captive-panda breeding centers
have not been without controversy. In recent
years, wildlife activists have criticized them for
commercially exploiting the pandas at the expense
of saving them in the wild.
Hundreds of
captive pandas put pressure on wild-panda
resources such as bamboo, critics say, and serve
no real purpose other than making money for the
centers. They argue that the Chinese government
should focus on habitat protection for wild
pandas, which, unlike their captive cousins, breed
relatively easily as long as they are afforded
sufficient forest cover.
To counter this
criticism, Hou Rong of the Chengdu base insists
that all the money garnered from panda loans
abroad is used for wild-conservation efforts and
none is spent on the base itself. Indeed, partly
through the funds raised by its captive-panda
population, China has made considerable progress
in conserving wild pandas over the past couple of
decades.
According to Fan Zhiyong, the
species director for pandas at the World Wide Fund
for Nature's (WWF) Beijing office, China currently
has 62 natural reserves for the animal, up from
only 15 in 1989. The banning of logging and the
promotion of alternative livelihoods for villagers
affected by the ban have all contributed to
somewhat of a giant-panda comeback.
The
animal currently numbers about 1,600 in the wild,
up from an estimated 1,000 a decade ago.
But according to Hou, while wild pandas
may no longer be critically endangered, they
remain under threat, so that the captive breeding
program is a kind of insurance for the wild
pandas.
Breeding centers like the one in
Chengdu are working on methods for releasing
captive pandas into the wild, but so far all
efforts have failed.
In Chna's first such
experiment, last year the Wolong Panda Center, a
few hours northwest of Chengdu, released a
captive-born panda named Xiang Xiang into the
wild, but the creature was found dead this year as
the result of injuries sustained during a fight
with a wild panda.
Nonetheless, Fan from
the WWF believes that, given time, the efforts
will succeed..Unlike tigers and other carnivores,
which are notoriously difficult to teach hunting
skills to in captivity, pandas mostly graze on
bamboo, a process that is largely no different in
or out of captivity. The fact that Xiang Xiang
survived almost a year in the wild before being
killed, says Fang, only reaffirms his belief.
Back at the Chengdu base, nine baby pandas
have already been born this year and several more
are expected before the end of the year. For the
pandas frolicking in their playpen, space could
soon become a commodity almost as valuable at
bamboo.
Pallavi Aiyar is the
China correspondent for The Hindu.
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