A Problem with Pandas?

It happens every time anyone - anywhere - writes an article, makes a documentary, or even mentions the words "giant panda."  Someone will then make the pronouncement that giant pandas are a doomed species, one that is just hopelessly incapable of surviving in today's world, and that we should just write it off instead of throwing money at its conservation.  The argument is an intellectually dishonest one, one that I suspect some people bat around in order to absolve us, as a species, for responsibility for the decline of the panda.  Giant pandas were plugging along fine until humans started to hunt them and destroy their habitat.

There is no denying that pandas hold an incredible fascination in the minds of many people.  Desmond Morris of the London Zoo scientifically dissected their draw - the anthropomorphic face, the clumsy appearance, even the sound of the name - and pronounced them the most lovably-made animal on earth (never mind their infamously bad temper among zoo professionals).  They are considered to be one of the most recognizable animals in the world (truly remarkable when you consider that they weren't described to western science until after the American Civil War).  The internet explodes with the birth of every zoo panda cub.  To many visitors, one of the signs of being a "great zoo" is having a panda - I'm always baffled when visitors to our own small zoo ask if we'll get pandas ("You have all this bamboo here!").  The answer is "no."

The question that I'd love to ask in return is "Are pandas worth it?"  Not in the sense of are they worthy of being saved - any endangered species is, and pandas do have an umbrella-species effect; conservation efforts to save panda habitat in China also benefit other species that share that habitat.  I also wouldn't question the importance of Chinese zoos having pandas; captive breeding has proven very important to the survival of the species, and an argument could certainly be made that the Chinese people have the right to see the animals that their government dollars are going to save.  In fact, if the Chinese want to give away a pair of pandas now and then to other countries as tokens of good-will, I'm fine with that, as long as the animals receive good care and the moves don't impact the survival of the species.  What I wonder about - dare I say doubt - is whether WE (being the US, UK, and everyone else who is not China) should be in the panda breeding business.

Compared to the Chinese breeding centers, US zoos are only a drop in the bucket towards growing the captive panda population.  Since all pandas remain the property (I hate the word, but it's true) of the Chinese government, and are called back after a few years, we're not forming a sustainable US population.  Each panda birth takes up a lot of staff time and a lot of zoo resources.   Could those resources be better used elsewhere?  There are a lot of endangered carnivores in US zoo collections that could always use more championing - sun bears, clouded leopards, maned wolves.  Couldn't they get a little of that attention, a little more of that financial support?

Pandas are huge draws for zoos; anecdotally, I've heard plenty of folks in Washington, DC say that the year that their zoo was panda-less, there was a drop in tourism.  But why do we have to accept that giant pandas are inherently cooler than sun bears - they are smaller than pandas, and guests love small?  Or Andean bears, with their beautiful markings, maybe not as striking as a panda's but handsome nonetheless? Or any kind of bear?   Pretty much any bear is more active than a giant panda, to be sure, which largely sleeps and eats bamboo.

There's a whole zoo full of amazing animals that most visitors have never heard of.  Maybe we can help them pick a new favorite animal to obsess over.