| 1 | 1 | | He had good news for New Yorkers, Mayor Edward Koch said last week: taxes |
| 2 | | were being reduced, and the police department was being enlarged. 'But the single thing |
| 3 | | people will care about,' he added, 'is that the pandas have come to town.' How right he |
| 4 | | was. Last Thursday morning, as a gong was sounded and a comely female named Yong |
| 5 | | Yong waddled into her enclosure at the Bronx Zoo, New York City was gripped with |
| 6 | | that well-known but incurable fever: pandamania. |
| 2 | 7 | | At the seven zoos outside China in which they have taken up permanent residence, |
| 8 | | pandas are always the top act. If the adults cause astir, their babies cause chaos. When |
| 9 | | Tokyo's Ueno Zoo had a blessed event last year, 270,000 people suggested names for the |
| 10 | | little cub. Tong Tong (Child) was the eventual choice, and 13,000 stood in line for the |
| 11 | | first glimpse of that particular child. Another 200,000 a day called the 'Dial-a-Panda' hot |
| 12 | | line to hear him squealing. |
| 3 | 13 | | But Ling Ling, Yong Yong and the other actors in what might be called China's |
| 14 | | Travelling Panda Act - two more will be lent to the Netherlands' Beekse Bergen park this |
| 15 | | month - are meant to do more than entertain. Pandas also carry a message: they are an |
| 16 | | endangered species with a bleak future. Only a few, 700 or so, still roam the mountains of |
| 17 | | central China, and there are not enough in zoos to ensure their survival. |
| 4 | 18 | | Like most other endangered species, the pandas are a victim of what William |
| 19 | | Conway, director of the New York Zoological Society, terms the 'inexorable increase in |
| 20 | | human beings’. Chinese farmers have chopped down many of the bamboo stands that |
| 21 | | once fed them, and the pandas have been forced to ever higher ground and smaller |
| 22 | | spaces. But bamboo is not very nutritious (90% is water), and pandas must eat as much as |
| 23 | | 40 lbs. a day to maintain their cuddly look. Actually, they love meat, but nature has made |
| 24 | | them too slow to catch anything worth nibbling on. So they are left with bamboo, which |
| 25 | | moves only with the wind. |
| 5 | 26 | | The hapless animals are also bedevilled by what many other species - rabbits, for |
| 27 | | instance - would consider an unhappy sex life. Solitary by nature, they rarely enjoy one |
| 28 | | another's company. During their stay in New York, for instance, Ling Ling , who at 1½ is |
| 29 | | too young for mating anyway, will never be allowed out at the same time as the |
| 30 | | six-year-old, heavier (187 lbs., vs 119 lbs.) and presumably more aggressive Yong Yong. |
| 6 | 31 | | One answer to the pandas' plight is obvious: the Chinese should give them more |
| 32 | | space and more bamboo. In recent years the Chinese, with considerable financial help |
| 33 | | from panda lovers worldwide, have tried to do that. They have set aside twelve reserves |
| 34 | | that have different varieties of bamboo; if one kind dies out, the pandas will not starve to |
| 35 | | death, as at least 138 did during a major bamboo famine in the mid- '70s. Indeed, |
| 36 | | Conway, whose zoo has taken a lead in preserving endangered species, gives the Chinese |
| 37 | | high marks. 'They're spending more effort on pandas than the U.S. is on grizzly bears, |
| 38 | | which are even rarer in the Lower 48 states,' he says. ‘They’re an example to us.’ |
| 7 | 39 | | But high marks may not be good enough. Unless reserves are made larger, he says, |
| 40 | | and connected so that their inhabitants can move from one to another, 'the demise of the |
| 41 | | panda is predictable.' He adds, 'There are probably fewer pandas extant than there are |
| 42 | | Rembrandts. We ought to give them at least as much reverence as we give the works of |
| 43 | | man.' The crowds cheering them on at the Bronx Zoo last week seemed to be doing just |
| 44 | | that. |
| | | |
| | | Gerald Clarke in 'TIME', May 11, 1987 |
