Endangered Giant Panda suffers another setback after earthquake

May 26, 2008 11:43 AM

Efforts to save China's endangered giant pandas suffered another setback after the Sichuan earthquake. Less than 1600 pandas are thought to remain in the wild, with 249 pandas in breeding programs around the country. The Wolong Nature Reserve, subject of National Geographic's adorable Panda Nursery documentary and just 19 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, was badly damaged. Five staffers were killed, and several pandas are still missing. Search teams have been sent out to locate the missing pandas, and several injured pandas have been evacuated to the nearby Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding as well as to zoos around the country. Though they now have enough water to give the pandas, local officials have said that they are short on food. "We are in urgent need of bamboos and apples." Pandas International is collecting donations for relief efforts at Wolong.

The Wolong Nature Reserve was started twenty years ago with six sick or starving pandas, and has grown to be one of the larger regional centers for panda conservation. In addition to being seen on National Geographic's Panda Nursery, Wolong and Chengdu are known for using 'Panda porn' to help some of their pandas reproduce. Though most of the pandas were unharmed by the earthquake, the directors of the centers described them as being absolutely terrified and some of the baby pandas panicked, trying to climb the bars of their enclosures. Today, because of travel restrictions, the panda reserves are only getting a trickle of visitors - visitors who usually provide a large amount of their operating income. Last year, Director Zhang said, the center might receive as many as 5,000 visitors a day. Now, they often only see 20. As of right now, they have enough food left to feed the pandas for just one week.

posted by arnicae (15 comments total)

Director Zhang said, the center might receive as many as 5,000 visitors a day. Now, they often only see 20. As of right now, they have enough food left to feed the pandas for just one week.

So exactly how many people per week do pandas eat?
posted by srboisvert at 12:27 PM on May 26, 2008 [3 favorites]

According to this NYT report, as recently as today "Beijing is urgently appealing for international aid, including tents and other supplies to house, feed and clothe residents." and “The needs here are tremendous,” said Nicolas Tocqué, an emergency logistics coordinator working in Sichuan for Doctors Without Borders, the international aid agency. “There are people with no place to go.”

Anyone contemplating a donation to help pandas may want to keep the above in mind.
posted by mw at 12:28 PM on May 26, 2008

Anyone contemplating a donation to help pandas may want to keep the above in mind.

There were people in need before the earthquake as well.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 12:39 PM on May 26, 2008

Big moral dilemna: donate to people in need, or donate to help save a breed on the verge of extinction. Ideally you donate to both.
posted by Vindaloo at 12:53 PM on May 26, 2008

I'm with vindaloo - I posted this because I don't think that there has been much information about the side-effects of the quake on China's natural resources. Endangered species such as the giant pandas seem to have been affected more than in other recent natural disasters (totally anecdotal I could be entirely off base here). Personally, I've donated post-quake to Doctors without Borders and Save the Children in addition to Pandas International - all great organizations.

I'm going out on a limb here, but because we humans are responsible for their endangered status (mostly just habitat destruction, nothing fancy, just building homes where they live) I feel like we owe it to them to try to help save them. They're sort of like our little siblings - not able to fend for themselves.
posted by arnicae at 1:01 PM on May 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think I'm a bad person because every time I read something like this I picture the end of Matthew Broderick's "The Freshman" and wonder exactly what pandas (or other endangered species) would taste like. Not that I'd ever actually eat a panda, obviously, but I do wonder.

I hope the pandas do okay but I'd be donating to help the people.
posted by Justinian at 3:26 PM on May 26, 2008

They would taste like orange roughy, or chicken.
posted by fixedgear at 4:06 PM on May 26, 2008

Other species are also deserving of our assistance in times of crisis. After the failure of the federal levees, I gave to the Red Cross but I also gave to Noah's Wish to help get the abandoned animals to safety.

We need to stop thinking that humans are the only things that matter on this planet.
posted by OolooKitty at 5:30 PM on May 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

pandas are little bitches.
posted by deric at 5:33 PM on May 26, 2008

this link gossips about how hard it is to get pandas in captivity to mate, but really doesn't get down to it: i saw a documentary show on chinese state television the other night (which we get here on cable; i was curious to watch the official coverage of the earthquake) - the doc has long interviews with the main guy who led the breeding program... they used to just shove a male in to the female's cell when the time was biologically right, naively hoping they'd mate. this was a drastic mistake.

i couldn't find this doc online so far, but here's the cliff notes:

turns out female pandas are much pickier than that, and against forced marriage: [slow to load video] more than once the male was left with no testicles, howling in pain on the floor; there is amazing footage regarding this- no they don't show that awful moment - this is chinese state tv, after all, not 'faces of death' - but they do show right afterwards, with extreme close-ups of the female mouth with blood all over it... once this happened a couple times, this breeding disaster (there are very few mating males) led to alternative efforts, including a program to show the animals panda porn on tv, which was not effective at all apparently until they accidentally turned the sound on.

this is where things got going... it's not surprising captive animals would be depressed and lethargic (so would you); but hearing other pandas have sex, the sound of it, was predictably effective... panda porn (as sex education) is now a big part of the panda re-population effort... in the wild it is reportedly normal for young pandas to watch older pandas having sex (from a distance)... i looked for the footage on the cctv site but couldn't find it; i'll post it if i do...

the porn seems to be working though:

"After years of methodical research, scientists say there's a baby boom among one of the world's most beloved species - the giant panda. This year is indeed one for the record books - with 31 pandas born in captivity. Nine new cubs now live at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Center. The number of successful births has more than doubled the 12 of 2005, and tripled the year 2000 total of only nine. This year 14 came the natural way, while artificial insemination helped produce the rest. The newest arrivals were born in August and September."

meanwhile here's a WWF report on pandas.

ps
regarding the earthquake:
since we are not a control economy, how about those of you that feel like giving money to help needy humans please do that, and those of you that feel like helping needy pandas please do that... we don't have to all agree; better perhaps we disagree so money goes to both?

(though the point that humans have rendered these beings into semi-helpless siblings is correct, sadly, and seems an honest impact assessment)

meanwhile: good justinian, you'll never get to taste one unless/until there's a helluva whole lot more, so you should send your money to the earthquake pandas, if you want shot. (though fully recovered they may still invoke that other great social taboo, of being too cute to eat; this is a risk you take)
posted by jojo-dancer at 6:03 PM on May 26, 2008

Goodbye, Yunnan white-handed gibbon
posted by homunculus at 6:08 PM on May 26, 2008

this link gossips about how hard it is to get pandas in captivity to mate

I like pandas. I hope they survive.

But... wow. What spectacularly awful animals they are. Only eat one thing, and that one thing is just barely food, and they eat it with a terrible digestive system for eating that one barely-food thing, or like they somehow got conned when it was time to choose lifestyles. It's like a bad joke from God. Add the never-fucking thing in, and... wow.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:20 PM on May 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

that aspect reminds me of koalas, who, if i understand things correctly, eat only eucalyptus because at one point in history everything else died off, herbivore-wise, and those koalas who could take that diet, which is to say: 'some of them didn't die' (many did) are these koalas we have now, adapted to this very toxic plant, tough little buggers, certainly, quite hardy, but powerfully, genetically - for generations - and so perhaps hopelessly drug-addicted (to eucalyptus, a trippy sedative, apparently: it is poison to most) which is made most clear when they can't get a hold of any and turn into awful little bitches. as junkies do. but we still love them. pandas seem more chill, but do not take opium, thankfully, or maybe that's just chinese propaganda...
posted by jojo-dancer at 1:33 AM on May 27, 2008

So pandas are sort of like nature's junkie crustpunks?
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 3:26 AM on May 27, 2008

evolution's a bitch...
posted by jojo-dancer at 1:16 AM on May 29, 2008