(CN) Live on wild side, or die in cage?

[Guest guest]

China Daily

http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2002-04-05/64357.html

(LI XING)

04/05/2002

 

Ten years ago, I stayed for four nights deep in the Qinling Mountains in

Northwest Shaanxi Province.

 

There I met Jiaojiao, a 7-year-old female panda who had already bred and

brought up a 3-year-old son and was nursing her young daughter.

 

Since then, one of the greatest joys I've had has been hearing about

Jiaojiao and her new cubs. Between 1989 and 2000, Jiaojiao gave birth to

six.

 

However, I was recently saddened by the latest news on the mother panda.

 

A year ago, Jiaojiao and her 8-month-old son were captured and taken to a

breeding centre. Jiaojiao - who should have been roaming free in the wild

and meeting her mate to possibly have her seventh baby - and her son, still

live in captivity.

 

Excuses have been made. However, Wang Dajun, a researcher with the Peking

University Research Centre, saw Jiaojiao two years ago. He said his friends

who had helped monitor Jiaojiao's development for nine years between 1989

and 1998 told him that Jiaojiao and her son looked healthy when they were

captured.

 

Since last year, the research centre has made repeated pleas to have

Jiaojiao and her son returned to the wild.

 

Lu Zhi, who won international praise for her panda research, has been

working hard to get Jiaojiao released back into the Qinling Mountains.

 

I fully support their endeavour, because Jiaojiao is the symbol not only of

the giant pandas living in the wild but she also represents nature and the

ecosystem.

 

Having been tagged with a tracking device for eight years, Jiaojiao, along

with her cubs and the wild panda community, provided valuable research data

for Pan Wenshi, the renowned professor from Peking University, and his

students, to conclude that human beings are the main enemy endangering the

survival of giant pandas.

 

For nine years, Pan and his students conducted arduous field research into

the lives of the giant pandas and the ecosystems in the panda's habitat in

Qinling. Jiaojiao became the focus of their study.

 

And Jiaojiao has played her role well. By producing six healthy cubs,

Jiaojiao has refuted the belief that pandas suffer from reproductive

deficiency and that they are unable to raise their own children.

 

The pandas are scientific testimony that they maintain a genetic diversity

at the level only about two percentage points lower than domestic cats.

 

By having her main staple food, bamboo, analyzed, Jiaojiao revealed that she

couldn't have suffered from obesity and lethargy and needed medical

treatment, as one story claimed when she was captured. Pan and his students

have determined that bamboo is very low in protein and calories.

 

Pan and his students made a thorough study of the ecosystem in the habitat

of Jiaojiao as well as of 220 to 240 other pandas in Qinling. The mountains

are also home to others - birds, plants and, above all, animals who have

lived in Qinling for a long period of time, including golden monkeys,

takins, black bears, musk deer, goats, felis cats, wild boars and

porcupines.

 

Because most giant pandas in China live in areas where there are at least

two species of bamboo to choose from, the flowering kind of bamboo does not

endanger the lives of the giant panda.

 

Upon the steep high hills in Qinling, thick woods of fir, pine and

broad-leaved trees provide a shield for some 20 species of bamboo to

flourish, which are rich in moisture and, therefore, make suitable food for

pandas.

 

With all those facts, Pan and his students have had to study the history of

human settlement in the Qinling Mountains to find the culprits who endanger

the lives of the black-eyed and cuddly bears, the symbol of the World

Wildlife Fund.

 

They discovered that for centuries Jiaojiao's ancestors fought a losing

battle against humans, who slashed and burned the hilly land and with it the

pandas' food, finally retreating about 200 years ago into the highest area

on the main ridge of the Qinling Mountains, where humans had tried but

failed to develop agriculture.

 

For more than 40 years in the past century, forests were cut down and ruined

what Pan calls " the last habitat of the giant panda. "

 

Meanwhile, hunters from in and outside the region set thousands of traps for

wild animals.

 

" Every year, at least two to three healthy, breeding-age giant pandas are

injured or are killed in the traps, " Pan told me a decade ago.

 

But Jiaojiao and her cubs have given hope to Pan and his students at the

Peking University Panda Research Centre.

 

" All these facts show that the giant pandas have a good chance of survival

from extinction as they have been doing so for the past 700,000 years, " Pan

said. " If they keep breeding at such a rate - and if we human beings help

protect their natural living environment and their lives, then they should

survive. "

 

After repeated calls from leading wildlife experts, including Pan and his

students, the sound of dynamite exploding and electrical sawing stopped only

a few years ago. The forestry industry area has been turned into a nature

reserve.

 

Meanwhile, the life stories of Jiaojiao, along with those of her children,

are being told on TV wildlife documentaries worldwide and educational

programmes that talk about the need to protect wildlife.

 

The story of Jiaojiao also tells us that protecting the giant panda also

means safeguarding their habitats and conserving the ecosystem that nurtures

not only the wildlife but also mother Earth.

 

If we keep making excuses to intervene in wildlife, such as placing animals

in captivity, we are actually doing a disservice to wildlife, to the

ecosystem and to the Earth's biodiversity as a whole.

 

Simon Levin, a leading world scholar on the environment, warns us in his

book " Fragile Dominion " : " Our own existence is not independent of that of

biodiversity: we rely on a wide range of services that other species

provide, and their demise hastens our own. "

 

As Lu Zhi, Wang Dajun and other researchers at the Peking University Panda

Research Centre reiterate: " Let Jiaojiao, who has given us hope, live in the

wild, not disappear in a cage. "