Panda research base

By markontour, October 27, 2024

Everyone knows the panda from the multitude of iconic images that this loveable-looking bear has inspired around the world. But surely there is nowhere where the panda’s image is more ubiquitous than in Chengdu, an enormous city of 21 million residents in south-western China and home to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, which I was privileged to visit this week.

As our brilliant guide sadly informed us early in the visit, there are now slightly fewer 2,000 pandas alive in the wild – all of them in China and with many living in the mountains that ring Chengdu. Once prevalent across east and south east Asia, human deforestation and hunting has wiped out pandas from 99% of their ancient homes.

This is all the more sad as the panda is clearly an animal of great evolutionary tenacity. Wen Wen, the eight year old male panda I watched casually chomping through a succession of bamboo sticks, has a bite more powerful than that of his cousin, the polar bear, because his forebears were carnivores, utilising sharp teeth to tear flesh. Twelve thousand years ago, when prey became scarce during the last ice age, pandas evolved to vegetarianism, putting that formidable chomp to use to strip the bark of still abundant bamboo and adapted their stomachs to digest the nutritious centre of the stalk.

That desire to survive is harder to discern today. In the face of the over-powering destruction of the Anthropocene, pandas can appear to have given up. Mating just once a year, panda babies are notoriously rare and while mothers typically give birth to twins, they quickly focus on the strongest baby, leaving the weaker sibling to perish. Many pandas don’t seem that interested in procreation at all and are seemingly content to lead solitary, celibate lives.

Ironically, given our leading role in their demise, pandas’ fates are now inextricably entwined with that of humans and, more specially, China, for whom they are a revered national symbol. The Chengdu panda base which I visited is currently home to 240 pandas and has an active rearing programme, primarily designed to release strong young pandas into the wild.

While a diet of hard-to-digest bamboo means pandas are low on quick-release energy and can appear lethargic, they still roam 5 or 6 kilometres a day in the wild. The large, vegetation-rich compounds at the panda base, with their carefully chosen fauna and extensive natural climbing opportunities (pandas are slow, but highly competent tree-scalers), seemed to this inexpert eye to give the pandas born here every chance of strong development. Certainly, there were no signs of distressed or depressed animals that one sees at less well-managed zoos and safari parks.

Some of the Chengdu panda base cohort, however, will not only never see their natural habitat, but will become international ambassadors – part of what the Chinese refer to as ‘panda diplomacy’. Xiong Bang, a 23 year-old elder panda (25 is generally the limit of a pandas life), whom I encountered languidly chewing bamboo while stretching out on his back, did a long tour of diplomatic duty in Japan before he returned to Chengdu for retirement.

I’m not in a possessed of enough information to comment on the welfare impact of travelling pandas like Xiong Bang, but it is clever foreign policy. Most famously, a gift of two pandas Pandas sealed the rapprochement between China and the USA in the early 1970s. For some time after, western politicians would only regard a trip to China as a success if they returned with a panda.

The loan of a panda remains a high value gift. Panda bears are not only rare but undeniably cute. Their big black eye patches might scare off predators through their sheer oddness, but that combined with 1 centimetre thick black and white fur, gets most humans cooing.

Watching a toddler-panda learning how to climb – a zoo keeper stationed below to execute a quick catch should the panda pup’s bravado outweigh its dexterity – was just a delight. Similarly, it was impossible not to smile while observing five teenage pandas play-fighting and foraging for bamboo sticks thrown by their human keepers.

Indeed, seeing these gregarious young bears at play it was hard to imagine that by the time they reach adulthood they will become largely solitary beings, defending their territory and only deigning to engage other pandas during the very short annual mating season.

Therein lies the pandas’ dilemma – with a reproductive rate so low, and the cost of human-induced environmental destruction so high, there is seemingly no way to live independently alongside humanity. In that context, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is providing a great service. And for this grateful human it was simply an enormous pleasure to spend a little time in the company of such delightful of animal brethren.