No More Rent-a-Panda

The Chinese government has long recognized the unique appeal of the country’s giant pandas but has been slower to protect the dwindling panda population. The teddy bear-like creatures have been trapped by peasants for their skins, trained to ride bicycles in Chinese circuses and, in recent years, lent out at a rapid clip to foreign zoos eager to exhibit pandas and boost their attendance revenues. Zoos were willing to pay $500,000 and up to borrow a panda for six months, so the so-called rent-a-panda program earned millions in foreign exchange for cash-strapped China, too.

Now, to its credit, China has acknowledged that sending breeding-age pandas abroad upset the animals, jeopardized the country’s breeding programs and pushed the critically endangered species closer to extinction; the panda population has fallen below 1,000. The rent-a-panda program has been abolished, and no more export licenses will be issued for short-term loans.

China’s hand was forced by the World Wildlife Fund and the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, which complained in a lawsuit last spring that the rent-a-panda program was just the kind of commercial exploitation banned by the 1982 Endangered Species Act and an international wildlife convention. Although not a party to the lawsuit, China was embarrassed by the public furor. Chinese conservationists long opposed to panda rentals stepped up their internal criticism, too, and ultimately vanquished the Communist Party bureaucrats who regarded the pandas primarily as money-makers--another encouraging sign of the changes taking place in China.

China’s new policy means that fewer Americans will ever catch a glimpse of a panda in the flesh, but it is obviously good news for the pandas. The reclusive creatures, which rarely breed in captivity and reproduce very slowly even in the wild, are more likely to prosper at home, where they can roam the 12 vast reserves that are set aside for them high in the bamboo forests of central China.