Adapt or Die!

(Thumbnail image from National Zoo)

“They’re cute and cuddly, but is that enough?  This week a BBC Nature host actually suggested Panda’s be put out of their misery.  Naturalist Chris Packham defended his view on Britains GMTV and he argues that pandas are at evolutionary dead end.  They are not very bright, they are hopeless at reproduction in captivity, and they happen to live in the most populous country on the planet.  So Packham asked does the species really deserve to survive?” (ABC News)

We are looking at perspectives on the future of the Giant Panda Bear from National Geographic, ABC News, The Independent, The Telegraph UK, and CBS.

First ABC has a perspective from a senior curator at the National Zoo, where Pandas attract more than 3 million visitors each year.

“The reason why they need our help is because we are the ones driving them to extinction, and we are the ones that must help them now.”

But a blogger from the Telegraph takes Packham side and says that we should let the pandas die.

“This is evolution: adapt or die. Being cute and fluffy doesn’t give you any special rights, fatso.  ... And the idiot-bears clearly have some species-wide death-wish. …keeping the 150-odd pandas currently in captivity costs around £1.5 million a year for each Panda. How many of our own species could we feed and house for that?”

Efforts to artificially reproduce the species have proved successful in Zoo’s, and the WWF website reports that Panda population numbers increased 40% from the 1980’s to 2004 thanks to 50 panda reserves in China.

National Geographic has a perspective from the director of the World Wildlife Fund in China, who points out that even though we are helping pandas reproduce in captivity that doesn’t mean we are saving them.

“If these animals are all raised by people, they are no longer a wild species from a scientific and technical standpoint.  Artificial insemination and sperm samples will have a beneficial effect, but if sometime in the future the only way to see the survival of the Panda is through artificial insemination we know that extinction is not far off.”