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Stepping back from the Brink: Pandas return to Fengxian
Animal experts with the provincial Wildlife Management Stations in Shaanxi later confirmed that the dung, found in Fengxian, did indeed belong to an adult Panda, leading to speculation as to the spread of the endangered animal.
The dung has sparked interest among conservationists because it is the first substantial account of a Panda in Fengxian for over thirty five years. In December 2004, a local farmer reported seeing a Panda like animal in the mountains around the Fengxian, and having seen Panda dung during trips to gather bamboo leaves, but it was only more recently that dung was substantiated by experts.
Fengxian is located on the western approaches of the Qinling Mountain in Shaanxi province and, according to media reports, has not been the location of a substantiated Panda sighting since at least the 1960s.
Optimism
It is not yet known if the latest Panda sighting is a sign that the Panda population is increasing in the region, or if it is because individual Pandas are roaming further a field in search of food, but it is hoped that the sighting mean that the regions Panda population is returning to safer levels.
According to a January report published by Xinhua, China’s state run media group, government backed efforts to preserve and regenerate Panda habitats have allowed China’s remaining Pandas to substantially increase their numbers in a relatively short period of time, allowing the species to take a few steps further away from extinction.
According to Xinhua, wild Panda numbers have increased by 50 percent thanks continued conservation initiative during the late twentieth and early twenty first century.
The Panda
Scientifically known as Ailuropoda melanoleuca, the Panda is an omnivore belonging to the Ursidae family of bears. 熊貓, the Chinese name for the Panda, translates to Bear Cat, a reference Panda’s unusual paws. Its Latin name means Black and white cat-foot.
Though omnivorous, Pandas subsist on a very narrow band of foods, usually consuming bamboo supplemented with eggs and insects. They live in a limit range of habitats and have a low birth rate in the wild. Pandas are also notoriously difficult to breed in captivity.
Early efforts at Panda conservation by the Chinese government, which saw Panda cubs being removed from the wild and raised in captivity, proved to be disastrous. Efforts by foreign zoos to breed Pandas in captivity proved little better, and in many cases were worse.
In a notable change to today’s hostile climate, during the 1970s, an apparently forgotten period of Sino-Japanese reconciliation, China used the loan of Pandas to Japan as a sign of friendship and unity, cementing earlier political gains made during the normalization of relations.
Similar loans were also made to zoos in America.
Currently, there are thought to be 1600 Pandas left in the wild.
Captive breeding programs have improved quite a bit recently. The San
Diego zoo has gotten it's breeding pair of Pandas to yield two different
cubs within the last few years, one right after the other. All are doing
well.
Visit me @ http://www.theloonybin.blog-city.com/
As you closed the 5000 year history controverse comment entry, I have to
put it here. Just very shortly.
Some time ago, someone dropped a bomb at
the door of the CEO of Fuji Xerox, because of his person effort in the
improvement of Sino-Japanese relationship. So far I've got nothing about
that in Chinese media. How about you?
Another point is, do you think
that the juku is a plus for the personal knowledge enrichment?
leo
Could you please contact me.
Julien
Reporters Without
Borders
Julien [internet@rsf.org]
ACB,
I just read this article from TomDispatch written by Chalmers Johnson.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2259
I have no reason to believe Chalmers John is brainwashed by CCP. How come what he said is so different from your writing. Just want to drop a line. I realize I may be wasting my time here.
steve
Steve
The reason is that we are two different people with different experiences and different opinions. I have my areas he has his areas, my argument has its supporter, his argument has its supporters. This is the way of free speech.
My background has been in history, specifically the history of conflicts and the reasons behind them. I studied the socio-economic and socio-historic factors that lead to world conflicts, as well as the political systems and rational behind them. I’ve looked at the level of anger in China both now and historically, and I can’t see a ‘Japan’ link. Japan has done far worse things in the last 30 years than it is doing now, but never has so little been blown up to as so much in China.
In my defense I will ask you to note that that most of China’s arguments are made through the media, in Chinese, and broadcast to the Chinese people. If Japanese war crimes really were the issue, there would be far more diplomatic contact. China well knows that the only way to deal with Japan is behind closed doors. Japan simply pulls up the drawbridge when it comes to a public confrontation. Even if Japan is right, it won’t discuss things openly.
The submarine incident last year exception to this rule, and that infuriated China by making it loose face, this really didn’t help matters.
If Beijing really wanted another apology from Japan, it would call in the Japanese ambassador rather than calling in a CCTV film crew.
Another reason is that I am writing to a set persona. There are other reasons that I haven’t gone into because they either fall outside of the area that I know, or because they don’t fulfil the brief of this site. This is the Angry Chinese Blogger,
You are never wasting your time by posting here. I might not agree with you, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to read what you have to say. It is only by doing this that we can better understand other peoples perspectives
Leo
I Can’t print that kind of story on this site, it would be like waving a pair of red and white rising sun boxer shorts at a an already enraged blog reading Chinese bull.
If you have anything that I don’t have that was written in the foreign language media (Korea, Chinese, English, etc) rather than by domestic Japanese media I’d be interested in a link just out of personal interest to see what is being said outside of Japan. I must admit that I don’t know the facts in this case as I haven’t been following Sino-Japanese news in the Japanese domestic media, its stressful enough reading these stories in the international press.
Saying that, the Japnese press tends to downplay any kind of conflict story, not just those with China. Open clonflict is considered shameful in Japan and issues of conflict are often hidden.
Looney Bin
Yes, captive breeding programs have come on leaps and bounds from the early days, which were an unmitigated disaster in many instances, not just for Pandas and not just in China. Both foreign and Chinese zoos have had a number of well deserved Panda births since people began to better understand the animal and its habitat.
China has led the way in this field in many ways and is providing expertises on Pandas to foreign breeding programs as well as running its own. Efforts to save the Panda are very important for China and are a symbol of international prestige.
I think that I reported on the San Diego Pandas births when they were announced in the press.
Leo
I think that Juku are an excellent idea, they are often far better than regular high schools as their curriculum usually are freer and the teachers are often younger, and thus more energetic, than in state high schools. They also allow students access to alternative ideas and concepts (Unfortunately two private schools in Tokyo chose to distort wartime history recently and gave the entire of Japan bad name, but given that they were the only two in the country that used the distorted books, I won’t hold all Juku to task for that even if Korea and China do) and allow them to study topics not covered, or not covered in depth, in state schools.
Unfortunately there is often a lot of pressure on Japanese students to attend a Juku, and schools sometimes set their curriculum on the premise that students WILL go to one, and those who can’t afford to go, who can’t go for other reasons, or don’t want to go, can have a hard time in the classroom because of it and may slip behind Juku attendees.
I also think that Juku have helped to keep Japan’s youth crime down by providing structured after school activities that keep children out of trouble and continuing discipline outside of regular school hours, they also give children the opportunity to meet people from different schools and to make new friends.. When I was staying in Britain several years ago (shudder), there were almost no after school activities for children, and youth crime was at epidemic levels. I’ve heard that it has gotten far worse there now because of the prevalence of mobile telephone and hard drugs have given children something new to steal, and something to buy with the money that they get from it.
Britain could do with more private study schools (and a lot more social discipline), though given the level of government interference in education there, the cost of running any kind of business in Britain, and their apathy towards education, I don’t believe that they would work as well as they do in Japan if at all. All things considered, I am wouldn’t want my children to be raised in that environment.
What I am not sure about are study schools that cater exclusively for high school entrance. This defeats the purpose of graded entrances, and I think that they put too much pressure on students. I never went to one of these schools because my family sent me to study in a high school in the west rather than one in Japan, and I ‘m glad that I didn’t get put under that kind of pressure. I don’t believe that I received as high a quality education as I would have had had I gone to a Japanese state school, but I was exposed to a lot of different ideas, and more importantly, a lot of people from different cultures and countries, and I had more free time.
While Japanese students can be under a lot of pressure with Juku and high school entrance (private evening schools didn’t get nicknamed cram schools for nothing), it gets worse as students approach college, especially if they don’t make it in to one in the first year after high school. College prep schools (schools to help people to get into college) are not always an enjoyable option because of the pressure put on people to attend a good college, and the suicide rate among modern Ronin is scary even when you compare it to Japan’s high suicide rate.
Cultural note
Juku means private in Japanese, and is the name given to extra curricular evening study schools. They are often called cram schools and have occasionally been misrepresented in the west as being serried Dickensian education factories. In fact, many Japanese children want to go to them and enjoy the challenges and different ideas brought by them.
On the other hand, Juku can also be part of the pressure put on Japanese students, particularly before high school and college entrance years and they cut into both a students personal time and a families income. Many students feel pressured to attend Juku so as not to fall behind their classmates who go to one.