Today is the International Panda Festival, is China's initiative to save the giant panda festival, 1993 is the 10th anniversary of China's launch of the Giant Panda Movement, Chengdu in order to commemorate the 10th anniversary, held the 93 International Panda Festival in Chengdu, China since then set September 22 every year for the International Panda Festival. So what was the habitat of the giant pandas like before they were saved?
In the first half of the 20th century, the two sons of United States President Theodore Roosevelt Sr. (nicknamed Teddy Teddy, the teddy bear became popular because of his kindness to a young American black bear) came to China, and the brothers did not do what their father did to black bears, but hunted pandas native to China, and later published the book "Tracking the Giant Panda".
Two brothers and a hunting panda
Source: Wiley
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the citizens of imperialist countries who hunted pandas were naturally not the Roosevelt brothers. From the beginning, it starts with Davy, a France who named many Chinese wild animals, who discovered the panda and his team at first, and initially wanted to send the panda to the West, but of course the end failed, and David had to make the panda skin into a taxidermy and take it abroad. The exhibition of this panda specimen has also aroused widespread attention to the panda in the Western naturalist circles, but at that time, there was still a lack of legal protection for animals, people were full of conquest and curiosity about natural creatures, and there were also many "simple folk customs like Jinghai" style of scientific research, and many people collected and appreciated these creatures by directly hunting to obtain specimens.
A specimen of a giant panda in the Natural History Museum in Paris
The Roosevelt brothers came to China to collect panda specimens in the spring of 1929, and before Roosevelt, people from Russia, United Kingdom, Germany and other countries came to hunt pandas. Of course, hunters from these countries are not only attacking giant pandas, in 1914 an United States named Hoy also hunted the baiji dolphin in Jiayu County, Hubei Province (this baiji dolphin later became a type specimen of this species); At the end of the 19th century in Xinjiang, Pvalsky in Russia discovered the Przewalski's horse, a national first-class protected animal, and then the Przewalski's horse was hunted by a wave of Westerners.
An old photo of this goddess of the Yangtze River
Source: animals24-7.org
Asian wild horse
Source: warrenphotographic.co.uk
The giant panda, which is loved by Chinese and foreign people today, was just a collection in the eyes of many people at that time. After Roosevelt Jr., some people tried to capture live pandas directly and take them abroad, and a United States named Ruth brought out the baby panda Su Lin from Sichuan Province, which caused a sensation after arriving at foreign zoos. After Su Lin's untimely death, her relatives were also hunted, some of them were lucky enough to reach abroad, and some of them disappeared halfway. A United Kingdom named Tangier Smith is even more frantically involved in panda capture activities, known as the panda king.
Visit the National Museum of Zoology next door to the museum and read this panel about the search for pandas by Westerners and the ban on hunting in China at the time.
If this continues, it will naturally be a catastrophe for China's wildlife resources. The 1946 Ta Kung Pao mentioned that the giant panda population had been destroyed by poaching by Westerners, and that China during the Republican era had enacted laws on the collection of biological specimens by foreigners in China. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, there were few stories of giant pandas being taken abroad and dying in transit, and they became a cherished national treasure given to foreign countries. After 1982, pandas in China were only leased, not sent, and now pandas of foreign animals are leased, and they have to return to China when they have children, and these foreign zoos that take care of pandas are also collaborators in scientific research. As of March 2024, 26 institutions in 20 countries have established cooperative research with China on giant panda conservation.
Beibei, a panda cub delivered at the Smithsonian Zoo
图源:smithsonianmag
Domestic panda breeding base
Today's life for pandas can be said to be much better than before, and behind this is also the epitome of changes in international relations and China's rejuvenation. I hope that giant pandas all over the world will always be treated gently.
Xinbao at the San Diego Zoo
More than a dozen kinds of bamboo were planted in the garden for Xinbao and Yunchuan
bibliography
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba3948Time to update China's panda loan terms
QI YAN , YUNHONG HU, AND HAOBIN BEN YE
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-america-fell-love-giant-panda-180956692/
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/04/the-surprising-reasons-why-no-one-trophy-hunts-for-pandas/
http://www.djy.gov.cn/dyjgb_rmzfwz/c129802/2024-03/18/content_c2a5101e3ba14c01ade462ed460e2e1a.shtml
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/pandas-return-to-us-conservation-diplomacy/
http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/20240530/11edac3f89e54fcfb29f464c47cf315c/c.html
Hu Jinzhen, Giant Panda Research, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, 2001
Zhao Liangye: Panda China: A Documentary of China's Giant Pandas, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 2019
Animaldiversity官网
Written by | Great Qing Divine Dragon
WeChat edit | Zhao Zhiyu