WWF considers Chris Packham's views on saving Giant Pandas

[Guest guest]

Dear all,

Please find attached a transcript of the debate between Mr

Chris Packham, noted British naturalist and presenter of BBC's 'The Really

Wild Show' and Mr Mark Wright, Chief Scientist of WWF-UK. Once again, The

Guardian has risen to the occasion in the best tradition of journalism to

give voice to opposing and competing viewpoints. This newspaper, in my

opinion, is the most reader friendly newspaper, and has been at the

forefront of considering reader's opinions on anything that is published in

The Guardian and The Observer. I personally have had the great pleasure of

interacting with their journalists and their editor, Mr Alan Rusbridger and

they have been unfailingly courteous and helpful. In terms of coverage of

environmental issues, I would rate them only second to the Independent, but

in terms of overall journalism, they represent the very best of journalistic

ethics.

Please do submit your comments to the Reader's Editor at The Guardian on

this topic. I wish some newspapers in India started similar schemes, so far

only The Hindu has shown interest.

I hope you will find the appended exchange of views as edifying and

enlightening as I did.

Best wishes and warm regards,

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/23/panda-extinction-chris-packham

Should pandas be left to face extinction?

 

This week, TV naturalist Chris Packham said pandas might not be worth

saving. Mark Wright from the World Wide Fund for Nature is one of the many

who disagree

 

The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>, Wednesday 23 September

2009

 

A panda and her cub: is this charismatic species worth the effort needed to

save it? Photograph: Keren Su/Getty Images

*Yes, says Chris Packham*

 

I don't want the panda to die out. I want species to stay alive – that's why

I get up in the morning. I don't even kill mosquitoes or flies. So if pandas

can survive, that would be great. But let's face it:

conservation<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/conservation>,

both nationally and globally, has a limited amount of resources, and I think

we're going to have to make some hard, pragmatic choices.

 

The truth is, pandas are extraordinarily expensive to keep going. We spend

millions and millions of pounds on pretty much this one species, and a few

others, when we know that the best thing we could do would be to look after

the world's biodiversity

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/biodiversity>hotspots with greater

care. Without habitat, you've got nothing. So maybe if

we took all the cash we spend on pandas and just bought rainforest with it,

we might be doing a better job.

 

Of course, it's easier to raise money for something fluffy. Charismatic

megafauna like the panda do appeal to people's emotional side, and attract a

lot of public attention. They are emblematic of what I would call

single-species conservation: ie a focus on one animal. This approach began

in the 1970s with Save the Tiger, Save the Panda, Save the Whale, and so on,

and it is now out of date. I think pandas have had a valuable role in

raising the profile of conservation, but perhaps " had " is the right word.

 

Panda conservationists may stand up and say, " It's a flagship species. We're

also conserving Chinese forest, where there is a whole plethora of other

things. " And when that works, I'm not against it. But we have to accept that

some species are stronger than others. The panda is a species of bear that

has gone herbivorous and eats a type of food that isn't all that nutritious,

and that dies out sporadically. It is susceptible to various diseases, and,

up until recently, it has been almost impossible to breed in captivity.

They've also got a very restricted range, which is ever decreasing, due to

encroachment on their habitat by the Chinese population. Perhaps the panda

was already destined to run out of time.

 

Extinction is very much a part of life on earth. And we are going to have to

get used to it in the next few years because climate change is going to

result in all sorts of disappearances. The last large mammal extinction was

another animal in China <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china> – the

Yangtze river dolphin, which looked like a worn-out piece of pink soap with

piggy eyes and was never going to make it on to anyone's T-shirt. If that

had appeared beautiful to us, then I doubt very much that it would be

extinct. But it vanished, because it was pig-ugly and swam around in a river

where no one saw it. And now, sadly, it has gone for ever.

 

I'm not trying to play God; I'm playing God's accountant. I'm saying we

won't be able to save it all, so let's do the best we can. And at the moment

I don't think our strategies are best placed to do that. We should be

focusing our conservation endeavours on biodiversity hotspots, spreading our

net more widely and looking at good-quality habitat maintenance to preserve

as much of the life as we possibly can, using hard science to make educated

decisions as to which species are essential to a community's maintenance. It

may well be that we can lose the cherries from the cake. But you don't want

to lose the substance. Save the Rainforest, or Save the Kalahari: that would

be better.

 

Chris Packham is a naturalist and presenter of Autumnwatch

*No, says Mark Wright*

 

You are reading this because it is about giant pandas. We could have this

argument about the frogs of the rainforest, and the issues would be

identical, but the ability to get people's attention would be far lower. So

in that sense, yes you could argue that conservationists capitalise on the

panda's appeal.

 

And, to be fair, I can understand where Chris is coming from. Everywhere you

look on this planet there are issues to be addressed and we have finite

resources. So we do make really horrible choices. But nowadays, almost

exclusively, when people work in conservation they focus on saving habitats.

 

Chris has talked about pandas being an evolutionary cul-de-sac, and it's

certainly unusual for a carnivore to take up herbivory. But there are many,

many other species that live in a narrowly defined habitat. When he says

that if you leave them be, they will die out, that's simply not true. If we

don't destroy their habitat they will just chunter along in the same way

that they have for the thousands of years.

 

And besides, in terms of its biodiversity and the threats it faces, I think

that the part of China where pandas live should be on the preservation list

anyway. The giant panda shares its habitat with the red panda, golden

monkeys, and various birds that are found nowhere else in the world.

 

The giant panda's numbers are increasing in the wild, so I don't see them

dying out, and I haven't heard anything to suggest that other biodiversity

isn't thriving equally.

 

It is true, though, that there some some cases where preserving an animal is

not the best use of resources. If you asked 100 conservationists – even at

WWF – you would probably get 90 different answers, but look at what happened

with the northern white rhino in Africa, which we're pretty sure has died

out. We lament its loss. But at the same time it had got to the stage where

the likelihood of success was at a critically low level. If you were doing a

battlefield triage system – the rhino would probably have had to be a

casualty.

 

Otherwise, charismatic megafauna can be extremely useful. Smaller creatures

often don't need a big habitat to live in, so in conservation terms it's

better to go for something further up the food chain, because then by

definition you are protecting a much larger area, which in turn

encompasses the smaller animals <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/animals>.

 

And of course they are an extraordinarily good vehicle for the messages we

want to put out on habitat conservation. Look at Borneo, where you instantly

think of the orang-utans. In the southern oceans, you think of the blue

whale. Then there are polar bears in the north. There are things you pull

out from the picture because people can relate to them. And it does make a

difference.

 

Dr Mark Wright is chief scientist at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)