Animals in Popular Culture - Final Project

  Should Panda Stay in the Wild or Stay in the Zoo?

Have you ever seen a real-life panda? What are your views about wild pandas? I believe most of you have heard of or watched the movie Kung Fu Panda before. In this blog, I hope to examine the portrayal of pandas in popular cultures such as movies and documentaries. Let's take a look at how the movie, Kung Fu Panda 2, the documentary, Life of Rare Panda, and BBC Scotland news portray pandas, and how panda diplomacy in China affects the life of pandas. 

Panda in popular cultures

The portrayal of the panda, Po in the Kung Fu Panda series is cute, clumsy, and loves to eat. Yet, he is belligerent. The portrayal in this movie outlined the general view of pandas in media production. However, does the portrayal really reflect how pandas behave in the real world? If you think that pandas eat everything and are chased by many predators, you might be wrong. Indeed, pandas do not eat everything but bamboo. For some reason, pandas only eat bamboo in their diet even though they are much of a carnivore than an herbivore. 

In the movie, the panda, Po faced a lot of challenges and he kept training in martial art to fight against different enemies. In Kung Fu Panda 2, he needs to fight against a peacock named, Shen and his fellow wolf army. I think that the portrayal in the movie is quite accurate of the panda in real life. Pandas do not face many predators and they tend to avoid confrontation with other animals. But this doesn't indicate weakness. On the contrary, they have the ability to protect themselves from their major predators like a snow leopard.

Massacre of the Panda from Kung Fu Panda 2

                            Source: Kung Fu Panda Wiki - Fandom

There is one scene from the movie Kung Fu Panda 2, a massacre of the pandas from the Po's flashback that match the situation pandas are facing in real life. The massacre in the movie was made by Po's enemy, Shen, and his fellow army. However, predators of pandas do not contribute the most to the loss of habitat of pandas in real life. It is rather human harvesting, hunting, and tourism that lead to habitat loss, which we will discuss later in the blog.

Panda in captivity

Pandas in captivity differ a lot from wild pandas in terms of the ability of breeding. In the documentary Life of Rare Panda, we can see that humans are so stressed to get female pandas to mate with male pandas. The main reason is female pandas only fertilize approximately 36 hours per year, and also the fact that male pandas are very picky in finding a partner to mate, so people need to give the male panda different female panda at a time to see whether the male panda is willing to mate with any female panda. Moreover, before the male panda is willing to mate, they often get into a fight with the female panda and cause injuries by this.

Besides the ability of breeding, pandas in captivity also pose weakened wild survival ability. Since most of the captive pandas are captured from the wild when they are still in infancy, they have not fully developed their ability to live wildly. Therefore, captive pandas that were released back to the wild may face a lot of survival problems including nutrient deficiency and injury, more severely, some of the captive pandas may be found dead after they were released back to the wild.

Panda in the wild

As I outlined in the Kung Fu Panda 2 movie above, pandas in the wild actually do not face so many predators. Potential predators are jackals, snow leopards, and yellow-throated martens, they all have the ability to kill a panda cub. Similar to the portrayal of pandas in popular culture, Pandas in the wild are peaceful, and they don't usually confront other animals. However, giant pandas indeed have similar physical strength as bears and are able to fight back predators to protect themselves when necessary. 

Although pandas breeding in captivity is not effective, they also have some limitations and problems when pandas breed in the wild. Habitat loss and fragmentation became the most disturbing problem for pandas living in the wild. According to WWF, a large proportion of panda habitat has been lost due to different kinds of human activities. For example, pandas can be killed or injured by traps and snares because of human hunting for other animals, such as bears and deers. Moreover, since pandas live at best in a large bamboo forest, due to harvesting and tourism activities, many bamboo forests were fragmented and pandas no longer can travel around different habitats, isolating the panda population makes them harder to breed naturally in the wild. The supply of bamboo, as the major diet of pandas, accounting for more than 90% of their diet, becomes a limitation for pandas living in the wild. The bamboo tree takes around 5 years to grow fully and it usually die-off every 40 to 120 years, when they eventually bloom. In other words, pandas need to migrate to another habitat to search for food and habitat fragmentation makes them harder to do so.

In the past, there were some natural disasters that caused a large amount of the panda population to die. For example, there was a mass bamboo blooming in 1970 and 1983 causing a large amount of bamboo die-off. Many pandas died due to starvation. In 2008, Sichuan Earthquake caused landslides and damaged to panda's habitat.

How does 'Panda Diplomacy' affect pandas in real-life?

Panda Diplomacy is a concept that China gifts or loans pandas to foreign governments in order to enhance relationships between countries. It becomes a great soft power of China in politics. For a better understanding of panda diplomacy, there is a quote from Joseph Nye, "For China, pandas are equivalent to the British royal family. You try to trot them around the world and they add an enormous amount to the country's soft power." Instead of going through the whole development of panda diplomacy, I'd rather explain how this affects pandas in real-life. Most of the panda loan agreement expires in 10 years and the country has to return the pandas back to China once the agreement expires if there is no renewal of the agreement. Some reasons include zoos outside China running out of bamboo supply and returning the panda to China could be a safer option for the panda. This brings up a controversy of whether we can maintain panda's well-being when they are captive in other countries, given that the food supply is limited and a different habitat environment.

The well-being of pandas living outside China is a topic that is less discussed widely. There is recent legislation proposed by Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, that giant pandas born in the United States should belong to the United States, and the United States should seek coordination with its alliance for panda breeding and conservative program. The bill is beneficial for pandas in terms of raising awareness and international resources in panda conservation. China has been partnered with Western scientists in researching new knowledge in pandas behavior, reproductive psychology, endocrinology, and nutrition. The coordination with foreign countries aids panda research to help in panda conservation. We can see from the video, BBC Scotland, The Pandas of Edinburgh Zoo that countries like Scotland are contributing sophisticated technology in surveilling pandas' behaviors and breeding programs. However, whether pandas can live in other countries' wild habitats is still in doubt. Since pandas live best in a cool and wet climate, with high and big bamboo forests. Southwestern to Southeastern China areas are the main habitat where pandas currently live wildly. WWF panda conservation project started in 2002 aims at creating new panda reserves and establishing ecological corridors in the giant panda-populated regions, which focus on pandas wildlife. Eventually, we hope to enable panda free-movement and genetic exchange in their natural habitat. With that said, if we want to explore panda reserves in countries outside China, extensive research and coordination between China and foreign countries are needed in search of new habitat that is sustainable for panda wildlife.

How did panda conservations change panda's life?

WWF has been contributing to panda conservation projects since 1980. After decades of conservation efforts, pandas are upgraded from endangered species to vulnerable species as more than 1800 giant pandas are living in the wild. Given that habitat loss is one most the most concerning problem for pandas, wetland protection and the fishing ban has helped to restore some of their habitats. However, the development of dams, roads, and other infrastructures are still damaging their living space and bamboo forest. Despite the panda species' endangered status has been removed since 2016, our conservation works cannot be reduced as giant pandas' habitat could suffer and the panda population can be reduced significantly if we loosen our conservation work. 

Controversy in Panda Conservation

Some argue that pandas at this time are just a product of diplomacy, this is because most of the wild pandas are living in Minshan and Qinling mountains in China. Although pandas live outside China in more than 21 countries, most of them are in captivity in zoos, and most of the panda ownerships belong to China. This makes panda diplomacy in China so powerful. The imbalance of ownership of pandas makes China has a huge advantage in using pandas as a political soft power to maintain relationships between countries. The sponsor of the bill about panda diplomacy, Nancy Mace cited that China has been taking advantage of her soft power, the threat against Taiwan, the suppression of protest in Hong Kong, and its violation of humanity in the Uyghurs. Therefore, the passing of the bill would definitely help weakens China's soft power, and in turn, countries should work together to achieve a better global panda conservation program. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the most effective way to improve the well-being of pandas is to minimize the destruction of pandas' habitats as the fragmentation of pandas' habitats affected the most the supply of bamboo and the areas of free-movement of pandas for natural breeding. After reading this blog, you now have a better understanding of the situation pandas are facing in captivity and in the wild. We understand that there is no shortcut to the development of panda reserves, the ultimate goal is to maintain a sustainable panda population in the wild and achieve a better natural breeding rate. Since pandas living in captivity are so much different from those living in the wild, we aim at providing a smooth transition from captivity into wild release so that pandas can have better survival skills and be easily incorporated into wildlife. We all hope that pandas should live freely in the wild, but keeping pandas captive is inevitable for research and ensuring the number of newborn pandas is sufficient. 

Source:

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4. Cohen, L. (2021). "Conservation Efforts Have Saved China's Giant Pandas From the Endangered Species List". Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/giant-pandas-off-endangered-species-list-china/

5. Lukpat, A. (2022). "50 Years Later, Some Question Value of U.S.-China 'Panda Diplomacy". Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/13/world/asia/us-china-panda-diplomacy.html

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7. Wolfson, E., Foley, K. E. & Goldhill, O. (2018). "Humans Should Stop Meddling with Pandas and Let Them Die". Retrieved from https://qz.com/1308730/modern-pandas-should-have-died-out-years-ago/

8. WWF. "Habitat of the Panda". Retrieved from https://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/endangered_species/giant_panda/panda/where_panda_lives_habitat/

9. WWF. "Major Threats". Retrieved from https://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/endangered_species/giant_panda/problems/

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