Science Friday - How 'Panda Diplomacy' Led To Conservation Success

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

In 1972, pandas arrived at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, DC, to huge fanfare. Since then, pandas have been some of the city’s most beloved residents.But for the first time in more than 50 years, DC is panda-free—indefinitely. Mama panda Mei Xiang, papa bear Tian Tian, and their youngest cub Xiao Qi Ji returned to China in November when their leases ended. This is possible because all but a few pandas residing outside of China are on loan through agreements with the country.It’s not just the National Zoo waving its pandas goodbye—the Memphis Zoo’s single panda returned to China in April, and Zoo Atlanta’s pandas will go later in 2024. The news of the pandas’ departure seemed sudden, and it stirred up some questions: Why are the pandas leaving? And why now?The news resurfaced the idea of panda diplomacy—how China introduced pandas to the world by loaning them out to other countries and using them as a symbol of cooperation.SciFri producer Rasha Aridi and freelance journalist Aja Drain look back at 80 years of panda conservation, and how panda diplomacy paved the way for groundbreaking science. And they try to answer the multi-million dollar question: Was it all worth it?This story was produced by Rasha Aridi, with help from Aja Drain. Edited by John Dankosky, with help from D. Peterschmidt and Emma Gometz. All our music and sound design is by D. Peterschmidt.Special thanks to the experts we spoke with: Dr. Chee Meng Tan, Dr. Pierre Comizzoli, Dr. Mel Songer, Michael Brown-Palsgrove, Dr. Rich Bergl, Dr. Jack Liu, Dr. Binbin Li, as well as Dr. E. Elena Songster, environmental historian at Saint Mary’s College of California, and Dr. Carolyn Lin, professor of communication at the University of Connecticut.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Did you know that panda conservation has a juicy political history? And it gave way to one of the biggest conservation efforts in the world. The giant panda story is a very good example to show that, look, if we really put a lot of efforts, what difference we can make. It's Tuesday, December 26th, but as you well know, it is also Science Friday. I'm Cyfry producer Rasha Airedi. And today, we're turning our attention to one of the most beloved animals of all times. giant pandas. Earlier this fall, Washington, D.C.,'s three resident pandas returned to China, and their departure stirred up some questions about why we had pandas in the first place and what this

could mean for panda conservation. As a wildlife nerd and D.C. based journalist, I dug into this with freelance journalist Asia Drain. In 1972, pandas arrived at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. to huge fanfare. And since then, pandas have easily become the the city's most beloved residents. But for the first time, in more than 50 years, the district is panda-less, indefinitely. Mama Panda, Mei Shang, Papa Bear Tian Tian, and their youngest cub, Shao Chi Ji, returned to China in November when their leases ended, because China actually owns all the world's pandas.

Daybreak in Washington, as the National Zoo's three biggest stars began their long journey home. A sad moment for three bears that are leaving. with a little piece of our hearts from D.C. People are so sad that these pandas are gone. After five decades, time has run out on the Smithsonian's Panda Exchange Program with China. It's the end of a conservation effort.

And now, all these years later, we are bidding our giant pandas. Farewell. Early in the morning, on November 8th, the Bear Trio climbed into their crates, embarked on a luxury trip to Dulles International Airport in private FedEx fans, and then boarded a VIP

one-way flight back home, featuring in-flight amenities like a couple hundred pounds of bamboo and their favorite snacks like biscuits and apples. It's not just the National Zoo waving their pandas goodbye. The Memphis Zoo's singular panda returned last April and the Atlanta Zoo's pandas will go later in 2024. The news of the panda's departure seemed sudden and it stirred up some questions like, why are the pandas leaving and why now? It's resurfaced this idea of panda diplomacy. basically China playing politics with pandas by loaning them out and using them as a symbol of cooperation.

So today on the show, we are looking back at 80 years of panda conservation, how panda diplomacy paved the way for groundbreaking science and the multimillion dollar question, was it all worth it? Let's go back in time to China in the mid-1960s. Mao Zedong's communist government was in power with a goal to transform China. Under his rule, millions of people died in the great Chinese famine. And those suspected of being enemies of the Communist Party were persecuted and killed. Millions of them.

And with all of this going on, Mao aimed to introduce a new China to the world. And to do that, China needed friends. So as part of its charm offensive, China started gifting pandas, which it refers to as national treasures, to its buddies, like the Soviet Union and North Korea, extending a bamboo branch, if you will. Because imagine if you have a country and there's nothing much it can offer because it's not very advanced at that point, technologically speaking, how would you attract attention?

Dr. Chimington is a researcher at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia. He studies Chinese soft power, in this case, how China used pandas to charm the world. So all of a sudden, when you have something like pandas that are really rare, The appeal was there because it's something that people thought it's the stuff of legends. And the pandas were more than just unofficial ambassadors. They were a hit. People all over the world felt in love with their adorable fluffy faces and their goofy personalities,

and people flocked to zoos to catch a glimpse. As for the United States, it had pandas before. Like in the 1930s, an explorer brought the first panda back from China, and that cub catapulted pandas to international forces. fame. And the first real panda gift given to the U.S., a male and a female, arrived in 1941, as a thank you for the U.S.'s support in China's war against Japan. But by the time the 60s rolled around, the U.S. was panda-free. And China had a new government. Although most other countries didn't know the full extent of what was happening under Mao's rule, tensions between the U.S. and

China soared nonetheless. And Americans at the time had pretty strong opinions on China, not positive. positive ones. The tides changed in 1972 when President Richard Nixon became the first sitting U.S. president to visit China. And during that trip, first lady Pat Nixon noticed a box of cigarettes with pandas on it. Or so the story goes. She remarked how cute the pandas were, and the Chinese premiere said, I'll give you some. So a few months later, China sent two pandas named Lingling and Xinxing to the National Zoo.

And it was a big deal. One account described that the panda security was so tight, quote, as if it were Mao Zedong himself. And it was Pat Nixon who ended up welcoming the bears to D.C. I think pandemonium is going to break out right here at the zoo. Thank you very much. And she was right. More than a million people visited the pandas within a month of them arriving. And this worked in China's favor.

The main target is not the government. It's really the people of a specific country. It was a very, very charming and a very good tool. Pandas helped Americans warm up to the idea of China by softening its image through these squishy, cuddly, childlike bears. And China has continued its subtle strategy of panda diplomacy, though it's evolved a few times since then. Eventually, China stopped offering pandas as straight up diplomatic gifts and instead loan them out to zoos for short periods. The pandas traveled from zoo to zoo every few months, like a museum exhibition. And that made boatloads of cash for both the zoos and China.

Each loan sent several hundred thousand U.S. dollars to China and U.S. zoos made millions. So when that plan came under attack for prioritizing profits over the panda's well-being, panda diplomacy evolved again. This time, to focus on scientific exchange. Basically, the rules that the zoos had to contribute to conservation and research. And that's the model still operating today. It revolved around one goal. Save the pandas.

As panda diplomacy was ramping up, pandas were endangered due to poaching, bamboo die-offs, logging, habitat destruction, and even from China sending them as diplomatic gifts since those pandas were barnapped from the wild. Through gifting pandas to other countries, save the pandas, became a global mission, and ultimately recruited the help of several countries, millions of zoogoers, and thousands of zoo staff and scientists to do so. One of the biggest initiatives became making panda babies in captivity, which was no small feat. Panda babies are notoriously tricky to conceive, even in the wild. Females only ovulate once a year, so they can only conceive a cub for about 24 to 72 hours out of the entire year. So timing is everything. To complicate matters, pandas are solitary bears, and also very territorial. So they only really mingle with each other about once a year.

when it's baby-making season. And even then, the stars and anatomy have to align to make a cub. The National Zoo had trouble for decades. It took the first pair of pandas, the ones that Pat Nixon welcomed around 50 years ago, 11 years just to mate. The female, Ling, Ling, experienced multiple pseudopregnancies. It's exactly what it sounds like,

when a panda's hormones imitate a pregnancy without there actually being one. And the scientists don't know she's actually pregnant until a baby is, or isn't born. A frustrating fake out for researchers. Plus, newborn panda cubs are incredibly tiny and helpless. They come out pink and wrinkly and are smaller than a potato. Ultimately, that first panda couple had five babies together over 20 years, but none

of them survived due to pneumonia, stillbirth, lack of oxygen, or other infections. But after that panda couple died in the 90s, the National Zoo needed to succeed with the next couple, Meishang and Chen Chen, who arrived in 2000. Dr. Piero Kometzoli is a reproductive scientist at the National Zoo and has been working with pandas for more than 20 years. The problem is that, you know, when you have only one male and one female whale, if they don't really get along together, if there is no chemistry during the breeding season, where they have no other choices. Desperate for the pandas to mate naturally, scientists all over the world had to get creative. A sanctuary in China reportedly tried giving pandas human Viagra to stimulate.

You know how Viagra works. Another time, the National Zoo got their male panda to start working out, to strengthen his legs, and train the female to lie down in the optimal breeding position. Once, a zoo in Germany even tried playing a panda adult film to show him how it's done. I mean, I'm not sure that they have a very good eyesight, so watching something, on the screen, I'm not really sure that they could really understand or whatever. So, no, I think it's not a really scientific approach. Plus, putting two pandas who do not want anything to do with each other is risky.

We are talking about, you know, very large animals, very big teeth, and they can really hurt each other if something goes wrong, if they are not really ready to get together or if they get frustrated. And so that's the reason we had to proceed to artificial insemination. Over the course of 20 years, Meishon gave birth to seven cubs, all conceived through artificial insemination, which China has been using since the 70s. Four of those cubs survived. Between developments like artificial insemination and cryopreservation, basically the freezing of semen,

scientists got better at getting mama bears pregnant. Plus, with time and research, scientists and zoo staff became better, caretakers. So more and more pandas were being born and surviving. And even though those cubs were born at the National Zoo, their births were worldwide collaborative effort. Like Pierre was constantly learning from his colleagues in China and they even came to visit the National Zoo's pandas to help out. And that was to me extremely exciting because I could talk to people who had managed, you know, tens or hundreds of pandas in the career compared to me that was my relatively, you know, small experience in giant panda.

Pierre also worked with zoos across the U.S., in Europe, and other parts of Asia. Everybody was sharing their information during the breeding season about, okay, what should we do, what's the best way to make sure that natural breeding is going to work or when is the best timing for artificial insemination. This is Science Friday. I'm Rasha Eriti. And I'm Asia Drain. We're looking back at the history and science of panda conservation. During the 2000s, scientists were finally getting the hang of captive breeding.

In the earlier days, scientists actually had to capture wild pandas and bring them into breeding centers so they could make more babies. But with so many more cubs being born in captivity, scientists didn't need to wrangle the wild ones anymore. In fact, they could start releasing the ones born in captivity. This is fantastic. And we were able to do that. We'll erase the help of assisted reproduction, crow. preservation of seamen and of course a very tight plan for the genetic management of those animals. And Pierre wasn't just going for quantity.

But it's also the quality, the genetic quality to make sure that whenever they're going to be reintroduced, they have really all the genes that they need to survive and to face really any kind of changes in their environment. Over all these years, the National Zoo managed to raise four panda cats. cubs. So that's four fresh sets of genes in the genetic panda pool. I spoke with Michael Brown Palsgrove, curator of Asia Trail and Giant Pandas at the National Zoo. For a female to give birth to four cubs in the wild might be extraordinary. Tishon, our first male cub, has actually fathered cubs. And Bow-Bow, our female, has actually already given birth to three additional cubs.

So it's not just four, it's the future generations we're contributing as well. With decades of panda research happening right here in D.C., it feels a little off that the pandas aren't actually here anymore. But the zoo researchers say that should be celebrated. Here's Dr. Pierre Comenzoli again, the reproductive scientist. It's important for those animals, you know, to go back to China and to contribute to the sustainability of the population. We have to accept that, and I think it's a good message also for the general public to understand that those animals, they do not belong to you. They belong to China and they belong to the bamboo forests. As for the zoo's three former pandas, they're settling into their new homes in China just fine, according to the curator Michael.

For Meshang and Tian Tian, they're really just going to sort of have a great life in sort of a retirement community. Eventually, Chow Chi Ji will father cubs as well. So captive breeding became a smashing success. But pandas in the wild also needed help. Dr. Mel Songer is a conservation biologist for the National Zoo, and she says that improving the panda's habitat is still the number one most important thing. because individual panda populations can be really small and isolated. That's why, you know, increasing connectivity and increasing the amount of habitat that's there. So if you think about you've got your 20 pandas in your small area,

and they're not matching well, that's why, you know, increasing connectivity and increasing the amount of habitat that's there is really important. This exchange between scientists at the National Zoo and in China hasn't ended. It just looks a little different now since the pandas are gone. And it isn't just the U.S. pandas that are being repatriated. Pandas in the Edinburgh Zoo returned in early December, and the Adelaide Zoo in Australia is expected to return theirs sometime in 2024. The departures might seem sudden, but they've been in the works for years.

Here's Michael Brown-Pawsgrove again, the curator at the National Zoo. These were agreements that had been longstanding and were signed and agreed to by both parties, both China and Smithsonian. That's always been pretty transparent that they would be returning. Maybe we should just be better at reading the fine print then. Yes, I would agree, right? The fine print has been out there.

And I understand that people have gotten to know these pandas very well, but recognize that this is all part of the greater mission to save giant pandas. In the late 70s, there were about a thousand pandas left in the wild, and now almost double, plus several hundred in captivity. And in 2021, China bumped the pandas up from an endangered species to a vulnerable one. That's a massive win, especially because while pandas were pulled back from the brink, other species vanished. According to one report, global wildlife populations have tanked nearly 70% in the last 50 or so years.

And it's kind of weird to think about how pandas became the poster child of endangered species conservation, like by the World Wildlife Fund, when thousands of other species could have also used a lifeline. It begs the question, was all this time, money, brain power worth it? I'll admit, I started reporting this story as a panda hater. Are you serious? Yes, I'm sorry. Okay, I get it. I get it.

They're cute. But it's not like they're doing all that much for the forest, okay? They're not like bats that feast upon thousands and thousands of insects a night. Or elephants that engineer entire ecosystems, pandas are just kind of there. fallen out of trees, not making babies, eating endless bamboo, which, by the way, is very inefficient because they're carnivores. Why are we doing all this to save them? I took my panda-sized frustrations to Dr. Bin Bin Li, a conservation scientist at Duke Kunshan University in China. Binbin, am I wrong? Yes.

Yeah, the short answer is yes. Like, Pan-Bin, am I wrong? Yes, they do attract a lot of attention, tremendous like money, and you cannot stop the love. But most importantly, the attention and also the funding goes into pandas. They actually go into their habitat conservation. And this is the most important part. And if we already have pandas there and doing the work and calling for attention and also money for conservation, why not? And why we should hate pandas, actually, we should celebrate them. And that love and international support led to real change. If you think about how pandas become

popular, it's not because China makes it popular. It's because people outside China makes pandas become popular. And then China began to understand, oh, actually this species is very important. In the early years of the communist state, China was in poverty and turmoil. Originally, Mao and his government saw science as a way to strengthen China's position in the world. Pandas became a catalyst for scientific advancement in China, and one major change came in the form of nature reserves. China set aside its first ever reserve for general ecology research back in the 50s. And in the 60s, right around the time China was gearing up to gift pandas, it established a second natural reserve for pandas. China ended up establishing 67 nature reserves in the years since.

They protected more than half of the panda's entire habitat. Pandas are what scientists call umbrella species, meaning conserving them also protect other critters that fall under their umbrella, like leopard cats, snow leopards, also monk jacks, blue ear pheasants. For example, in the past, the forest musk deer's population tanked, mostly due to habitat destruction and also hunting, since they were once sought after for their musk, which is a fragrant secretion used in perfumes. But panda protections help them, and in some areas there are now too many deer. Some scientists argue that not everyone wins with this trickle-down pandanomics approach. A study from a few years ago found that panda conservation fails to protect other large carnivores,

like snow lepers and wolves and the dow, which kind of looks like if a Shiva Enu had a baby with a red fox. Their decline was driven by similar factors to pandas, poaching, logging, and human encroachment. Also, pandas just don't move around all that much. Those other more active carnivores need almost 20 times more space to survive. So the hyper-focus on pandas didn't directly take away space from other carnivores. It just wasn't enough. So it works for pandas won't work for every critter. And for pandas to really work as an umbrella species, that umbrella has to get wider.

Enter the Panda Park. China quite literally patched things up by connecting all 67 panda reserves into the giant panda national park, which was announced in 2021. How exciting is that for conservation scientists? It's a mixed feeling. it will be a super great idea and it's super big. And it gave the chance to restore the connectivity and solve the habitat fragmentation issues within the area

because it's super big. And why is a mixed feeling? There are about 120,000 residents within the National Park. So thinking about how to balance the livelihoods of the local communities, 120,000 residents with about like 1,500 pandas. So how to balance the lives for the people and for wildlife. So there's still a lot of work to do. But the hope is that the park will connect those scattered panda populations

and protect more than just pandas, like the 8,000 plant and animal species that live in the park. And it's huge. If it was in the U.S., it'd be the third. largest national park. So panda conservation isn't really just about the panda. It's also about conserving the forests they live in, protecting other at-risk species that live there, and building up resilience in the face of climate change, basically leveraging the panda's fame and fortune for the greater good of the ecosystem.

This strategy of leveraging one token species to protect a wider ecosystem is one of the most common approaches in conservation. I spoke with Dr. Jack Liu about this. He's a sustainability scientist at Michigan State University. He's been studying pandas for decades. If you have $1 million, for example, you spend $1 million on one species, you sell one species. If you spend $1 on each species, you may not be able to even to sell one species. So that's my thinking about this approach, right?

I think they are shortcomings, of course. If you don't protect panda, where do you spend money on? Okay, so to Jack's point, why not pandas? And spreading money too thin probably won't do all that much good anyways. If we're going to dump a ton of time, energy, money into a species, it should be one that can do the most good. Yes, I think that's the relation. If you consider those other cascading impact from panda research and conservation,

I think it's really worthwhile to do it. Pierre, the reproductive scientist at the National Zoo, agrees. We need to have those iconic species and charismatic species because they are drivers of conservation. All the things that we develop for giant pandas are very useful to other species. The tools that we developed, for example, to monitor the hormones in the urine of the female giant panda, well, we could do the same for frogs. Research on panda pee can be used for other species.

Same goes for cry of preservation, the freezing of semen. And studying the vegetation, climate, or landscape of panda habitat could be useful information for many ecologists. So we get lots of bang for the pandas buck. But how does this play out across conservation? Dr. Rich Bergel is the director of animal care, conservation, education, and science at the North Carolina Zoo. And he brings us to our next point, money. So generally speaking, do you find that there is enough money for conservation? Like, would you say it is a well-funded field?

No, absolutely not. The money is never commensurate with the degree of threat to wildlife and the need. He says that it's easier to sell the public and funders on these big, flashy, exciting animals, like pandas, gorillas, tigers, elephants, you know, the crowd favorites. Are there any problems with that kind of, like, flagship or umbrella species approach? Sure. I mean, you can, if you do focus overly on the individual species rather than the habitat in which they occur, then you could, in theory, put in place programs or use approaches that would just preserve that thing while the system in which it occurs is allowed to get further degraded. But that's relatively unusual. Rich says that if conservationists are doing a good job, they're sharing the wealth. The reality is that there are some things that people are more willing to support. If you're talking about some slimy salamander like the hellbender in the mountains of North Carolina, it's a lot harder to get people excited about that, even if they are in danger of extinction or in trouble in the wild.

Right. Like I've never seen a hellbender plushy anywhere. Although we actually have those at the zoo, but we even have a live-sized hellbender costume that people wear whoever guns. So this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. So money is limited to say the least. As part of the National Zoo's latest panda contract with China, it paid the China Wildlife Conservation Association, which is a nonprofit, half a million dollars every year.

And that money went exclusively to wild panda conservation. In fact, Dr. Bin Bin Li, the scientist in China, says the money from the National Zoo actually paid for the fieldwork for her first panda project. To a lot of people I've brought this up to, it sounds kind of off-putting, like we're sending a good chunk of change away to China when we have our own critters to worry about here. What do you say in response? It's not, it's conservation shouldn't be a competition between what's the most important thing to conserve. And so conserving giant pandas, I think is important. Equally conserving the American Red Wolf in the United States is important.

Right. And like in the biodiversity crisis that we're in right now, it seems like a win is a win is a win. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And conservation wins are not necessarily easy to come by. The reality is that I cannot think of a single conservation project or species conservation initiative anywhere in the that is overfunded. Rich says that when it comes to funding, a good piece of it comes from individuals or foundations with their own interests, which is exactly where that 500,000 grant

for the China Wildlife Conservation Association came from. The National Zoo has two main revenue streams, Congress and trusts. The money sent to China is trust money, so it's not like you, as a taxpayer, are funding that. In fact, a good chunk of the Panda Program's funding comes from one private donor. He's given the zoo

more than $13 million for pandas. Needless to say, he's a fan. So the argument that spending money on pandas takes it away from other animals just isn't the case here. At the end of the day, the panda represents a conservation win one we so desperately need.

Scientists leverage the panda's fame and fortune and notoriety to save more than just these bears. It's to protect an entire ecosystem to pioneer new scientific techniques to share knowledge from species to species, and across borders. And although this whole panda-shaped movement is based in politics, conservationists in China and across the world want one thing.

They have the same priorities and objectives as we do, which is to save a species. And so we learned a lot with these pandas here. We shared that knowledge. So really, for me, it's more about the conservation wind than it is about the politics. And of course, when you are dealing with other human beings, you deal with diplomacy, you deal with politics, you deal with different cultures.

But that's to me the one of the other exciting part of working in conservation is to meet people from other cultures or other backgrounds. Right after Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Biden in November, he announced that China is considering sending pandas to California to, quote, deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples. Here's Dr. Chimingtan again, the policy researcher. When it comes to big things like that, highly symbolic things of this sort, nothing is coincidence. When the pandas were at the Smithsonian, this was under Mao's time.

So it's very likely, I think, because Xi Jinping is trying to rebuild China in many ways under his legacy. So, Pandas, until next time. For Science Friday, I'm Rasha Aridi. And I'm Asia Drain. This story was edited by John Dankoski with help from D. Peter Schmidt and Emma Gomez. D. Peter Schmidt also composed the music. A huge thank you to all the experts we spoke with. Dr. Chimeng Tan, Dr. Pierre Cominzoli, Dr. Mel Songer, Michael Brown-Palsgrove, Dr. Rich Bergel, Dr. Jack Liu, Dr. Bin-Bin Lee, as well as Dr. E. Olena Songster, and Dr. Carolyn Lynn.

On tomorrow's episode, The Wonderful World of Seweed. Join us. I'm Rasha Ariti.