“The panda is possibly one of the grossest wastes of conservation money in the last half-century.” Chris Packham British wildlife expert

You don’t know Toronto’s celebrity guests, but chances are you will when the Toronto Zoo formally introduces them in May. You will meet Er Shun and Da Mao when the two giant pandas sit upright in their spanking-new enclosures chomping on bamboo shoots all day. You will likely gaze in wonder, watching every move — be warned, there won’t be many.

But will you wonder why the giant pandas generate this kind of attention, while other equally endangered species are left to their fates?

True, there are too few giant pandas in the world. There are an estimated 1,600 giant pandas in the wild, mostly in a few mountain ranges in Sichuan province in central China. Another 300 or so live in captivity.

But there are even fewer Javan rhinos (about 40), Asiatic cheetahs (50 to 100) and forest turtles (14). The brown spider monkeys number around 60, the Bactrian camels 800. But why don’t these species generate the kind of excitement, and eventually conservation funds, that pandas do?

Add to that the fact it takes a gargantuan effort, and hundreds of millions of dollars, to keep them alive and to keep them growing. Aren’t those enough reasons to not spend so much money on them?

Chris Packham, the well-known British wildlife expert, famously said in 2009 that pandas are “an extraordinarily expensive species to keep going” and that we should pull the plug on them.

“The panda is possibly one of the grossest wastes of conservation money in the last half-century.”

David Wildt first saw pandas in 1972, when U.S. President Richard Nixon was presented a pair by the Chinese government.

“I thought they were very special animals,” says Wildt. “I was smitten, I admit it.”

Wildt is a senior scientist and head of the Centre for Species Survival at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington. The zoo is currently hosting two pandas.

Pandas’ distinctive black and white markings make them unusual and captivating, says Iain Valentine, director of Giant Pandas at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. “The black eye markings tend to accentuate the size of a panda’s eyes, which is something people often find instinctively appealing,” says Valentine. He adds that they are also more placid than their carnivorous counterparts.

Despite being smitten, Wildt is quick to add that as a biologist, he was more interested in their evolution, especially how they had become herbivorous, and their imperfect reproductive cycle.

Pandas have an insatiable appetite for bamboo. Typically, a panda eats for half the day and relieves itself dozens of times. It takes about 14 to 20 kilograms of bamboo to satisfy a panda’s daily dietary needs, and it hungrily yanks the stalks with elongated wrist bones that function quite like thumbs.

(Although most pandas are herbivorous, sometimes they may eat birds or rodents as well.)

Their diet — bamboo is 99 per cent water — is thought to have made them weak.

Then there is the “notorious” reproductive cycle.

Pandas are not only threatened by continued habitat loss but by an extremely low birth rate, in the wild and in captivity. Female pandas ovulate just once a year, for about 24 to 72 hours.

Even when the female panda is ovulating, it isn’t a given that the male will mate with her. Scientists have resorted to showing pandas videos of mating pandas or giving the males Viagra. Artificial insemination has been the primary method of reproduction.

“You have to ask . . . why did they evolve that way?” says Wildt.

Packham has argued that breeding of pandas in captivity is “pointless” because “there is not enough habitat left to sustain them,” if and when they are released.

Rebecca Snyder, curator of mammals at Zoo Atlanta, does not agree.

The greatest threat to the panda population has been caused by humans, because of habitat loss caused by mass clearing of bamboo forests for agriculture. “Thus, I think it is our responsibility to conserve giant pandas and try to ensure the survival of the wild population.”

Pandas are hardly the only wildlife species affected by increasing human activity. Tigers, cheetahs, elephants, turtles and rhinos are all endangered because we have encroached on their habitat.

But the panda is one of the few examples in the world of rare and protected wildlife whose natural habitat was able to gain a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

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The World Wildlife Fund, which has used the black and white panda as a logo since its founding in 1961, spends a little more than $2 million annually on panda conservation. At zoos worldwide that have borrowed pandas, the furry bears don’t come cheap.

The Toronto Zoo, as is typical, is paying $1 million annually to the Chinese government for research and conservation. The pandas will be on display as of May 19, and the two pandas will be in Toronto for five years, then in Calgary for five.

But it is not clear how much China spends on the pandas at its research facilities.

Wildt says pandas have probably received more funding than any other wildlife species, “but on the other hand, the Chinese have put in more money than the West has.”

Privately, many experts agree.

But Steven Price, WWF’s senior director of conservation science and practice, says he suspects as much money has been spent on saving African elephants, also on the brink of extinction. There were between three and five million African elephants in the 1930s; now, about 300,000 remain.

“The single largest conservation effort is not giant panda,” says Price, who is based in Toronto. “But I have to say they deserve every single dollar they have got.”

Exact dollar figures are tough to compile because there are so many wildlife agencies and governments involved in conservation efforts, but pandas are the species believed to get the most money.

But just because there is money for pandas, it doesn’t necessarily mean people would have donated for insects or small fish, says Price.

“To say it should have gone someplace else is not fair. People gave it” for the pandas.

Price and others point out that once a habitat is protected, it basically saves the ecosystem. Other species have benefited, he says.

Pandas need whatever money they have generated, says Price. “The question is whether it has taken something away from other species. I would argue it is helping other species.”

Pandas have been the flagship species for conservation, and efforts made with the bears have helped pave the way to discussions with the Chinese government about other species and the ecosystem.

Snyder, whose Atlanta zoo hosts two adult pandas and one cub, believes that tiger conservation has received more attention and significantly more money.

Efforts to save pandas are worth it, she says.

Some pairs in some zoos do not mate, but that is now the exception rather than the rule, she points out. The majority of giant pandas in breeding centres in China mate naturally.

“The reason the captive population is thriving is because we didn’t give up. The scientific community inside China and outside of China mounted a large research effort, and the knowledge gained from that effort played a significant role in the success of the captive population.”

That research is now being focused on wild pandas.

“I think it would be tragic to give up on giant pandas or any other endangered species,” says Snyder.

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