Will the beloved giant panda go the way of the dinosaur and the
dodo? The prognosis is uncertain (fewer than one thousand pandas
remain in the wild, and a live panda draws over $100,000 on the
black market), says wildlife expert Schaller in this popularization
of his years of panda fieldwork in China (first described in more
scholarly fashion in his The Giant Pandas of Wolong, 1985). As
usual, Schaller describes nature with a poet's eye ("the ridge
lunged upward like a dragon's spine bristling with fir and birch").
But what sets this apart from his earlier books is its bold
political content. As Schaller sees it, both the Chinese government
and the World Wildlife Fund, cosponsors of his panda fieldwork,
have messed up in their attempts to help the panda. Most of the
author's opprobrium falls on Chinese officials, who come across as
venal, xenophobic, and in love with red tape. Panda breeding
stations in China are dark, cold, and caked with frozen urine and
feces; some Chinese scientists abuse the animals instead of
studying them. Poaching is an ever-present problem as well. In this
oppressive climate, Schaller managed to conduct valuable research
into panda daily life, mating, child rearing, and the mystery of
why these enormous animals eat only bamboo, so poor in nutrients
("like a person who subsists only on watermelon"). He coos over
panda droppings ("carefully I passed the fragile treasure to Sir
Peter"), measures the length of chewed bamboo stems, and wonders at
the panda's solitary ways, all the while fretting over the paranoia
rampant in the research camp - a holdover, he believes, from the
horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Not that the West is blameless:
Schaller denounces the widespread practice of European and American
zoos renting pandas for exhibition without paying proper attention
to captive breeding programs. Classic Schaller, with a punch -
score one for the panda. (Kirkus Reviews)
Today only about 1,000 giant pandas survive in the wild. Dependent
on a shrinking supply of bamboo on the one hand, and threatened by
human greed and indifference on the other, the panda is at extreme
risk. As recently reported in Time, a live panda can bring $112,000
on the Chinese black market. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, black
marketeers charge buyers $10,000 or more for a panda pelt. At the
same time, Western zoos pay millions to rent the ever-popular
pandas for exhibit. Because the panda has become a lucrative
commodity, protecting it in the wild seems a near impossible task.
George Schaller and his Chinese colleagues were the first to make a
detailed study of pandas in the wild. This book recounts their
groundbreaking research on the panda in its dwindling native
habitat and in the midst of political problems as troubling as any
natural threat. Schaller forces us to confront the question: Can
this extraordinary creature, survivor of countless threats from
nature, survive its own popularity? In 1980, Schaller went into the
mountains of Sichuan province to study the panda - a species
considered a national treasure in China - on behalf of the Chinese
government and the World Wildlife Fund. For over four and a half
years, he and his wife, Kay, lived in the forests of the Wolong
panda reserve, monitoring the lives of the pandas, recording their
travels, fights, courtships, and deaths. In fog and rain and snow,
over steep mountains, they tracked not only pandas but also such
rare creatures as golden monkeys, red pandas, and takins. This is
the story of the Schallers' remarkable journey - told with the
evocative power that is George Schaller's gift. But The Last Panda
is more thansuperb natural history. It is a frank, disturbing
account of good intentions gone dangerously wrong; of pandas left
unprotected from poaching; of deadly traps set by poor villagers
hunting within nature preserves; of the greed that drives the
rent-a-panda programs; of simple bureaucratic bungling; and of the
economic and political pressures that distort the priorities of
international conservation efforts. The panda, Schaller tells us,
can survive. A realistic plan to save the species does exist. It is
his hope that The Last Panda, so urgent and eloquent in its
description of the mysterious denizens of China's bamboo forests,
will awaken the compassion that must save the panda from
extinction.
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