British royals, politicians take sides in panda fight
Leading members of the royal family and top politicians including prime minister Gordon Brown, foreign secretary David Miliband and London mayor Boris Johnson have become embroiled in a battle between rival British zoos to land the country’s first pair of breeding pandas in 15 years.
China’s government owns all of the world’s captive pandas but loans them out to zoos for a fee of around $1 million per pair per year, often on 10-year contracts.
The animals are notoriously reluctant to breed because of their low sex drive but a successful IVF breeding programme at Chinese panda reserves has raised hopes in the UK that the country could land its first pandas since Ming Ming and Bao Bao left London Zoo in 1994 after failing to mate.
According to a report in the Sunday Times, Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland is favourite to land a panda pair after signing a preliminary agreement with China after securing support for its bid from Prince Andrew and Princess Anne, prime minister Brown, foreign secretary Miliband and Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond.
London Zoo had also been in the running and had secured the support of London mayor Johnson, who had agreed to raise the subject of reducing the cost of the pandas with the mayor of Beijing during his visit to the Paralympics last year.
London Zoo zoological director David Field had apparently hoped that the Chinese could be persuaded to offer the pandas at a discount because of the close ties forged between Beijing and London as 2008 and 2012 Olympic hosts.
Anthony Tropeano, the director of Colchester Zoo, which had also been interested in acquiring a pair of pandas, said support from senior politicians and royals was essential for any bid to stand a chance.
“I went to the panda breeding station in China and spoke to the head. His exact words were, ‘It needs a political big potato for you to get involved’,” he said. “We wrote to Princess Anne and Downing Street but they just said ‘no’.”
Anti-zoo campaigners criticise the efforts of zoos to acquire breeding pandas, arguing that there are no conservation benefits because pandas kept or born in captivity cannot be released into the wild.
“It is all about tourism and politics and nothing about conservation,” Craig Redmond of the Captive Animals’ Protection Society told the Sunday Times.