China's "father of giant pandas" has said that the endangered
animal has a better chance for survival if left to breed on its own
in the wild and high-tech science should not be applied to saving
the population.
"The giant panda possesses normal reproductive capabilities with a
hope of lasting propagation and does not need cloning," said Pan
Wenshi, China's most well-known giant panda specialist and also a
professor at the prestigious Peking
University.
There are about 1,000 of the family in the wild, most living on the
mountains in west China.
Most animal experts believe that the species faces extinction
because of the creatures' poor reproductive capability.
However, Prof. Pan, who has led research teams to track down giant
pandas in the Qinling Ranges in west China for 13 years, said that
the animals can increase their population without any help from
man.
"From the point of evolution of the species, the shrinking
distribution of the giant panda and a drop in the number of the
endangered animals that has occurred since the mid-20th century is
just a short-term and normal reflection in the long-term evolution
of giant pandas," Pan said.
According to Pan, over the past 10 years, the population of the
giant pandas has been increasing at an annual rate of 4.1 percent
-- even higher than that of human beings.
Pan's team has also discovered that DNA diversity of the giant
pandas in the Qinling Ranges has not been degraded due to
inbreeding, which is common among the species.
Pan, 64, who has been engaged in scientific research and field
inspections into wildlife including giant pandas and white-headed
leaf monkeys, has won numerous awards and recognition for his work
in wildlife protection. He is a recipient of the Paul Getty Prize,
the highest prize given by the World Wildlife Fund.
Pan and other researchers of his team have put radio collars on
giant pandas to help gather information about their habitats,
frequency of activities, seasonal migration, mating and food
gathering habits. They also conducted ground investigations and
studied behavior with the help of satellite remote sensing.
Geological records show that giant pandas used to be widely
distributed in the Pearl, Yangtze and Yellow river valleys. Fossil
records also prove that giant pandas used to roam in northern
Vietnam, northern Thailand and eastern Myanmar. In the 19th century
and even until the early 20th century, giant pandas were spotted in
mountainous regions bordering central China'sHubei
and Hunan
provinces and southwest China's
Sichuan Province. But starting from the mid-20th century, giant
pandas could only be found in the mountains in west China.
Pan attributed the their shrinking population to increased human
activities.
Pan's theory about the long-term survival of giant pandas is echoed
by Zhang Hemin, head of China Giant Pandas Protection Center at Wolong,
Sichuan Province, and Zhang Guiquan, another giant panda research
fellow with the same center. Both Zhangs said the impact of human
beings on nature is the main cause of the population decline of the
giant panda.
However, Li Guanghan, head of Chengdu Research Center for
Propagation of Giant Pandas in southwest China's Sichuan Province,
challenged Pan's view, saying inbreeding among giant pandas living
in the wild has become a serious problem.
But all giant pandas specialists agree that cloning of giant pandas
will do more harm than good in preserving giant pandas as a
species.
Cloning of giant pandas neither preserves their diversity nor the
quality of their genes and will be of no significance to their
conservation, they insisted.
They explained that cloning just creates simple duplicating of
individual animals and is of no value for conserving a species, as
lasting propagation of a species mostly depends on hereditary
diversity.
In
1999, a Chinese research team announced they had cultivated a giant
panda embryo by injecting a strand of DNA from a giant panda into a
rabbit.
To
date, China has built 27 giant panda nature reserves, where the
animals are under top-level state protection.
( 09/26/2001)