Biologist Fights for Pandas’ Survival : Endangered species: Beijing scientist calls for firm policing of poachers and clear directives from the central government to farmers and foresters.

Smiling, cavorting cartoon pandas look out on every street, but real ones are fading quietly toward extinction.

Poachers defy the death penalty to capture their pelts. Farmers and foresters encroach on the shy animal’s feeding grounds, even inside reserves.

Scientists, either from lack of funds or flagging interest, have stopped studying pandas in the wild.

All except one.

Pan Wenshi, a biologist at Beijing University, spends half of each year huddled on the cool, damp slopes favored by pandas, tracking their movements in hope of devising better preservation strategies.

He has studied the rare animals for a decade, and said he missed his daughter’s childhood in the process.

“I want to know why pandas are becoming extinct, and . . . to help them,” Pan, 52, said in an interview. “Only after study can we come up with a method for saving pandas. Otherwise, any proposals will be blind and unscientific.”

For a national symbol whose name and image adorn hundreds of Chinese products, surprisingly little is known about the panda.

Organizers of the recent Asian Games in Beijing last year chose the panda as mascot and plastered images of it all over the city, but depicted the animal with four digits on each paw. Real ones have six, Pan pointed out.

Ignorance can have more serious consequences. Hopes of using pandas born in zoos to replenish the wild population, now estimated at 1,100 to 1,500, have foundered because of the panda’s poor breeding record in captivity.

Pan said many zoos give pandas too much food and too little exercise, which makes them too fat and weak to mate.

Only 37 pandas have been born in captivity in five decades, and 14 of them died within six months, he said.

Even the $1-million breeding center at Wolong in Sichuan province, built with help from the World Wildlife Fund and great fanfare, has succeeded in producing only one panda, in 1986. Scientists have virtually deserted the facility.

“People don’t know what conditions a mother needs to raise cubs,” Pan said. “Does the mother need quiet? What diet does she need? What kind of cave?”

Such questions have sent him to the remote Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi province, more than 620 miles southwest of Beijing, where an estimated 220 pandas roam.

He snares the animals, fits them with radio-transmitting collars, then releases them and tracks their movements. Sometimes, college students and teachers join him as short-term volunteers, but graduate student Lu Zhi is his only steady assistant.

It is easy to see why.

“Look at this,” Pan said, holding up the 25-year-old woman’s hand to show knuckles permanently swollen from cold.

“You lose a lot, but the rewards are great,” she said.

Among them was the sound of a suckling panda mother and cub. The mother wore a radio collar.

Pan and Lu have videotaped hours of mother-cub scenes. They learned that mother pandas leave their cubs for up to two days to hunt for food, which means cubs found alone in the wild may not be abandoned after all.

They learned that fewer than half the Qinling Mountain pandas are fertile and their isolation has led to much inbreeding. Some scientists have proposed introducing one or two pandas from another part of the country to enlarge the gene pool, but Pan said the Qinling pandas might not accept a newcomer.

One of Pan’s major concerns is how much human presence pandas can tolerate. Tradition and bureaucracy have prevented the removal of thousands of peasants from designated panda reserves, despite the pleas of scientists.

“China has so many people, moving them won’t work,” Pan said. “We need to find out ways that people and pandas can exist in a common area.”

He has found up to 60% of the forest cover in panda habitats can be cut down without ill-effect. He said farming is possible if limited to the lower slopes of mountains and if forested corridors between mountains are preserved.

Firm policing and clear directives from the central government are necessary, and Pan said he would ask for such directives in a 2,000-page report he was submitting to the Forestry Ministry.

Too much logging already has been done in some forest areas of the Qinling Mountains, he said, and others are threatened.

Pan said prompt action is needed to save the habitat, which he described as more promising for long-term panda survival than Sichuan province to the south. More pandas live in Sichuan, but also many more people.

“I think there is hope,” Pan said. “The problems are great, but we have to continue making efforts. If we don’t, it is over.”