OLL LEWIS: Panda Diplomacy

As part of the recent trade agreements between the UK and China, Edinburgh Zoo and the Zoological Society of Scotland have signed an agreement with the Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association to enable them to house a breeding pair of pandas.

This is quite an event because these days China is extremely picky about who gets its pandas, applicants having to satisfy some political requirements as well as the quite stringent ecological ones.

“This historical agreement is a gift to the people of the UK from China,” said China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming.

“It will represent an important symbol of our friendship and will bring our two people closer together.”

The chief executive officer of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), David Windmill, said: “This is a landmark day for RZSS, Edinburgh Zoo, the UK and China.

"It represents the beginning of a programme of research, education and partnership and the project has huge benefit for the UK and Scotland, both in supporting giant panda conservation and in enhancing our programmes in education, science and conservation."

Not everyone is impressed, though. Charity 'OneKind' did not see the merits of having a breeding pair of pandas in the UK. The charity's research manager, Ross Minett, said: “In this day and age, the prospect of two animals being transported from their homeland across the world so that the paying public in Scotland can see them in a cage in a zoo raises serious animal welfare concerns and is outlandish.”

“This is a commercial deal: the animals may appear to be diplomatic gifts - an outdated concept in itself - but in fact the zoo will pay a substantial fee for the lease of these animals.

“The Scottish and UK governments should ask themselves whether their support for this project is really in line with modern concepts of animal welfare and conservation.

“International conservation organisations like the World Wide Fund for Nature favour an approach that protects the panda's habitat and allows the natural population to grow, and if Edinburgh Zoo is serious about conservation it should be throwing its support behind local projects in China.”

I have actually been following this story for a while, though, and can address one of the concerns that Ross Minett raised: the fee he mentioned was actually a donation by the RZSS to help future conservation projects in China.