Another lovely wee guest post today, from John Nichol, aka @cowrin, who blogs at Suitably Despairing.
A panda at Holyrood yesterday
In a few weeks time, Edinburgh Zoo will take delivery of a couple of Giant Pandas, a gift from China. Actually, they’re not a gift, they’re a loan, bestowed by the country on any other nation which tickles it’s fancy. And to get them, Britain has done an awful lot of fancy-tickling.
There’s something faintly queasy about China’s use of this sad creature as a diplomatic tool. Not only do they demand that the country receiving the “gift†bends over backwards to please the Chinese, but they then have to pay China $1 million a year for the privilege of keeping the pandas for a maximum of ten years.
No animal should be used as a commodity in this way, bestowing favours on countries that please you, and I’m ashamed that Scotland and the UK is a party to this. It feels even worse when the poor creature being transported halfway around the planet is so endangered.
It was Chris Packham of Springwatch fame (and, to those of us of a certain age, Really Wild Show fame) who suggested a couple of years ago that we should let Giant Pandas die out. They’re an evolutionary dead-end, a picky eater which barely moves and barely mates. I have some sympathy with the idea that we’re only throwing money at the Panda because they look damn cute. After all, other species have come and gone without us giving much of a damn. But I also feel that if we have the means to save a species then we should.
What we shouldn’t be doing is saving a species just to use it as a diplomatic tool. Pandas are not trophies, to be paraded around to the citizens while the First Minister gushes about how much China really, really likes us. Animals that aren’t part of our food system should not be trade-able commodities between countries, to be exploited by politicians as some sort of coup that the creatures are in the country in the first place, or to be used to curry favour with previous enemies. If you really want to bestow gifts on a foreign country, then give them a statue.
Whether zoos themselves should exist or not is a whole other topic, but needless to say Edinburgh Zoo will not be shy about commercially exploiting their new residents, just another way that the pandas will be used for the benefit of others and not themselves.
It’s too late to stop the pandas from coming to this country, but I would urge the Scottish Government to have nothing to do with this shameful modern-day trophy-hunting.
#1 by Douglas McLellan on November 8, 2011 - 12:11 pm
I like the idea of panda-diplomacy.
I am quite sure the Edinburgh Zoo has ambitions to commercially benefit from the loan of the pandas. And, notwithstanding the recent senior management issues, this can only benefit the work of the zoo.
I have sympathy with those who are against zoos full stop (the polar bear at Edinburgh was always a heart crushing site) but I am really really looking forward to seeing the pandas.
#2 by Indy on November 8, 2011 - 12:39 pm
I think pandas should be allowed to die out with dignity. Surely their reluctance to breed says something in evolutionary terms that we shouldn’t mess with.
And personally I would shut down all the zoos. From the first time I was taken to a zoo as a child I thought they were just awful places. Right enough I haven’t been to a zoo in a long time for that reason but I can’t imagine anything has really changed. Safari parks may be a bit better because at least they have a bit more space but it’s still unnatural and surely with the multitude of nature programmes etc we can learn all we need to learn from animals in the wild.
#3 by Doug Daniel on November 8, 2011 - 1:22 pm
It would be fair to call it “modern-day trophy-hunting” if the point of a zoo was still purely to show off the animals the aristocracy had collected from around the world. However, zoos are there for conservation purposes, to help the species they contain. They exist to further our understanding of these creatures, and it makes sense to allow people to come in and see them to help fund the research. They’re also keeping the animals away from non-human predators.
It’s certainly a fine balance, though, and I do feel a bit of sympathy for Chris Packham’s view. Animals have been becoming extinct long before man even walked this planet, and by artificially extending the lifespans of these creatures (the info boards in Edinburgh Zoo show that these animals all have much greater life expectancies in captivity than in the wild), it can obviously be argued that all we’re doing is interfering with the evolutionary process. But how natural is their extinction in the first place? Is it down to evolutionary cul-de-sacs, or is it down to humans destroying their habitat and hunting them? Even if it is down to them being hunted by humans, is that really so different to any other species hunting another species?
It’s not just that pandas are cute, there’s also an element of guilt that it’s our fault they’re dying out. The question is whether you think it should also be our responsibility to save them, or if we just put it down to survival of the fittest. If humans didn’t exist, would the low libido of pandas and their fussy diet end up leading to their extinction anyway? We’ll never know.
#4 by Jeff on November 8, 2011 - 1:50 pm
I abhor zoos, really can’t stand them. The only thing more ghastly is the sight of a single tropical fish in a round bowl or, has been mentioned already, a polar bear in the relatively sunny(!) climes of Scotland.
So I almost fully agree with your concerns and points John but the only potential saving grace here is that there is some excellent skils and knowledge at Edinburgh Zoo and the staff don’t see the place as a tourist attraction but more as a place to research and understand animals and mating habits etc.
Does Edinburgh have better knowledge than China? Could the move make a crucial difference? I haven’t the foggiest but there could be argument in favour of this move there.
I’ll still wince just as much as you will at the ‘Come and see Ling Ling’ posters though.
#5 by Iain Menzies on November 8, 2011 - 3:08 pm
is there something especially wrong with a round bowl?
also you get polar bears on tropical islands, or is that just not Lost?
#6 by Indy on November 8, 2011 - 3:39 pm
Polar bears are marine mammals. They are not supposed to live in a bowl. They are supposed to follow the ice, to hunt and fish and swim – polar bears have been tracked swimming continuously for over 100 km. And they move about over large distances over the ice. In the Beaufort Sea polar bears have been tracked using radiotelemetry for 20 years. The SMALLEST activity area (i.e. the home range) was nearly 13,000 km2. The largest recorded was 597,000
km2. It’s not unusual for them to travel over 50 km in a single day.
So yeah there is a lot wrong with sticking them in a round bowl.
#7 by Jeff on November 8, 2011 - 3:41 pm
The thinking goes that the reflection of the fish’s own body is magnified in such a way that the fish will be constantly terrifying itself.
Add in the 3 second memory and you just have a terror loop that sounds horrific.
More seriously, tropical fish belong in tropical seas, not on a kitchen counter in Cheshire.
#8 by Jeff on November 8, 2011 - 3:52 pm
I’d like to see Lost’s Matthew Fox in an enclosure at the Zoo.
Nudge, nudge, wink, *baby tiger roar*
#9 by cynicalHighlander on November 8, 2011 - 6:56 pm
Tibet’s cry for help
Maybe we should put politicians into the zoos as that would bring them back into the real world.
#10 by itsyourself on November 8, 2011 - 7:11 pm
Not sure what to make of the panda thing. A perfect world would not have such things as zoos. But as we all know the world is as good as we make it.
In China you can buy a Panda experience, one on your lap, cuddles, pics with the kids etc for $100. Chinese uber capitalism has no limits. But the money does go to Panda reserves. As much as anything else in China at any rate after the usual payments etc We support a children’s charity there and are familiar with the standard system.
In China the state does almost nothing and has surprisingly little control of or care for anything outside of certain sensitive areas. In many ways people are less controlled than here. It is a brutal society however. I have seen terminally ill children and their parents begging outside hospitals.
Pandas are a symbol, a diplomatic tool and as such they show that someone has taken Scotland seriously. Should it be different? Perhaps, but Chinese society is different. My youngest daughter was born there and we visit friends and relatives often. Pandas are the least of most ordinary Chinese peoples worries.
#11 by the Burd on November 8, 2011 - 7:20 pm
Hear hear! Couldn’t agree more John!
#12 by Nikostratos on November 8, 2011 - 7:41 pm
No doubt Alex Salmond will say we have the sixth best Panda in the world and with Independence Scotland could save every endangered species in the universe…………
Er!! But not yer Labour Unionist only final extinction awaits the remaining few
#13 by setindarkness on November 8, 2011 - 10:47 pm
Total agreement here
#14 by Barbarian on November 8, 2011 - 11:26 pm
Notwithstanding my sister’s love of pandas – you name it she’s got the toys, luggage, posters etc etc, I agree that pandas do not belong in a zoo, and certainly not in Edinburgh.
Zoos do have a function in conservation and education, but that is better done with smaller creatures.
But they should absolutely not be used for political or diplomatic purposes. And people have greater worries than a panda coming to Edinburgh in order for politicians to be photographed beside.
#15 by Kirsty on November 9, 2011 - 9:27 am
This is a great post John. The ‘gift’ of pandas to Edinburgh Zoo isn’t really a diplomatic gesture, but a commercial deal – I think the zoo is paying a substantial fee to effectively lease these animals. If it really was all about the conservation and breeding of pandas, the money should be invested instead in wildlife reserves in China, to alleviate the destruction of the pandas’ habitat – one of the main reasons they are endangered.