Pandas From China Still the Cat’s Meow

A crowd jostles for a glimpse as Ying Ying lumbers on all fours around her cage, dried bits of grass sticking to her black-and-white panda rump.

“Over here!” shouts one man, waving to his camera-toting friend. Ying Ying yawns, exposing yellowed canines and a thick pink tongue before sitting down to gnaw on a bamboo shoot.

Nearby, in an open-air enclosure, two cubs lie on a bare tree, one lolling on a branch. Cameras click and whir. Children stare, hardly daring to breathe.

With their teddy-bear demeanor, Teletubby bodies and soulful eyes, pandas have long been one of the most recognizable and marketable symbols of China, the only place in the world where they live outside captivity.

Images of the animals are stamped onto everything from plush toys and panda-shaped chocolates to key chains and “Lesser Panda Cigarettes.” Last year, their home province of Sichuan in the southwest held its first international panda festival.

But as China clearly knows, no trinket can compare to the marketing potential of living, breathing pandas, which the Chinese call “da xiongmao” -- or “big bear cats.”

For years, the government has been lending pandas to zoos throughout the world, charging fees of up to $1.2 million annually and spending the revenues on research, breeding and protection in the wild.

The practice has not been without controversy. Critics have complained the “rent-a-panda” operation made big profits for some zoos without boosting efforts to save wild pandas.

China retains ownership and claims any babies, usually requiring that adults be returned within 10 years and cubs by age 3. In exchange, zoos conduct their own research and breeding -- and reap the publicity and tourist dollars produced by having pandas on the premises.

“It’s very successful,” said Li Guanghan, the main researcher at the Chengdu Panda Research and Breeding Base in Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu. “Both sides get what they want.”

The 1,000 giant pandas estimated to be living in the wild are now considered a stable population, although they are still an endangered species. About 80% of the animals, which normally weigh 200-250 pounds, live in the lush, cloud-wreathed mountains of Sichuan. The rest are in the nearby provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi and Qinghai.

The panda research center, China’s biggest, has bred 39 pandas since 1987. It is a maze of bushes and trees, concrete sidewalks and research areas. In one building, a series of pens hold closely monitored pandas that are pregnant, suspected of being pregnant or actually in labor.

Outside, tour groups snap photographs of pandas frolicking on some monkey bars. A few people peer through a window at a pair of mewling newborns, palm-sized pink creatures covered in down, their trademark black-and-white panda markings nowhere in sight.

The base has lent two pandas to Zoo Atlanta and four to a Japanese zoo for 10 years, in exchange for an annual fee of $1 million, Li says. For $30,000-$70,000 a month, zoos in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Thailand and South Korea have borrowed animals for up to four months, he says.

It’s a complicated process involving reams of red tape and months, even years, of waiting.

Zoos first must send a detailed request to the Chinese government, which dispatches an official to make sure that the zoo is suitable. Next, the parties apply for permits from each others’ countries following a strict set of rules on panda management and financial capabilities. Finally, if applications are approved by numerous levels of bureaucracy, permits are granted.

About 15 countries apply every year, Li says. Among those approved have been Japan and the United States. America prohibited panda imports for five years in the 1990s but lifted the ban in 1998 after the U.S. and China agreed to avoid loans of the animals that serve purely commercial purposes.

The pandas were being taken from the wild to meet overwhelming demand from zoos abroad, further depleting their population, says Karen Baragona, head of the giant-panda conservation program at the Washington, D.C., office of the World Wildlife Fund, which uses a panda on its official logo.

U.S. rules now require that pandas come from captivity rather than the wild, that they be used for research and that fees from loan agreements promote conservation in China.

“Ultimately, the most important thing is to ensure that giant pandas and panda habitat already covered by reserves are protected,” Baragona said.

But loans may slow because China’s government is allocating more money for pandas, says Liu Jianguo, who has done research at the Wolong Nature Reserve.

“When the loan program started in the 1980s ... money from the loan program was badly needed,” said Liu, an associate professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

Three U.S. zoos have pandas: the National Zoo in Washington and Zoo Atlanta each with a pair and the San Diego Zoo with two adults and a 3-year-old that will soon return to China. Two pandas are to be flown on Monday for a 10-year stay at the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee, which is paying $1 million a year for the loan. The Los Angeles Zoo also is hoping to obtain pandas.

Paying to borrow pandas is money well spent, says Ron Swaisgood, a field biologist at the San Diego Zoo’s Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species.

“It exposes millions of people to these charismatic animals, and raises public consciousness and interest in conservation of the species,” he said.

More important, he adds, sending pandas to zoos provides an opportunity for scientists to learn more about the animal’s biology and help with panda conservation.

San Diego’s pandas came from the Wolong Nature Reserve, which is about 75 miles northwest of Chengdu. The reserve has seen the births of 57 pandas since 1990, through both natural and artificial means. Forty-eight survived.

The 494,000-acre facility, nestled between verdant mountains and a roaring river, is frequented by busloads of tourists and donors.

“You cannot see the pandas without falling in love with these animals,” said Annmarie Plubell, a Washington lawyer who visits the reserve frequently.

She has pledged to donate $5,000 a year for the life of two pandas that she has “adopted,” named An Di and An Mei.

“The loan program is making it possible to generate resources for the preservation of the panda species,” Plubell said. “There’s a kind of dignity in it. It’s not a bunch of scientists walking around with rice bowls in their hands saying, ‘Give me money for research.’ ”