Patter of tiny paws? Pandas should just do what comes naturally!
FOR six years they tried – and failed – to encourage Scotland’s adopted giant pandas to mate.
Now bosses at Edinburgh Zoo have drafted in a world expert in panda reproduction as part of their efforts to produce a baby bear from Tian Tian and her mate Yang Guang.
Dr Eveline Dungl helped Tiergarten Schönbrunn – Vienna Zoo – to produce five cubs through natural breeding and assisted with Europe’s first naturally conceived cub in 2007.
In Edinburgh, the panda breeding programme was recently suspended after a failed attempt at natural breeding in 2012 and ‘invasive’ artificial insemination procedures each year since 2013.
The zoo, which pays China £760,000 a year to keep the two pandas and spends a further £2million annually on their upkeep, has been criticised for its ‘sterile’ enclosure, with some critics suggesting that could be a factor in the failure to produce a cub.
create Dr Dungl, the most whose natural approach environment is to possible for the creatures in order to help the mating process, confirmed: ‘It’s correct that Edinburgh Zoo and Vienna Zoo are in contact, sharing ideas.’
Dr Kati Loeffler, former director of animal health at the Chengdu panda breeding programme in China, welcomed the Vienna expert’s involvement. She said: ‘Dr Dungl has done an excellent job convincing the zoo’s management to allow its pandas to reproduce naturally. ‘It is greatly to Vienna’s credit that [it] maintains control over decisions regarding reproduction, without interference from China.’ Dr Loeffler welcomed Edinburgh’s move away from ‘the foolishness of repeatedly trying what does not work’, adding: ‘Perhaps someone is even concerned about the wellbeing of these two animals, rather than treating them as factory-farm animals.’
She said captive reproduction of giant pandas was a ‘very lucrative industry’ for its own sake and for the rental of pandas abroad. She said the industry was ‘anathema to successful release to the wild’.
Libby Anderson, adviser to the animal charity OneKind, said she was ‘furious’ that Edinburgh had continued with invasive treatments that were ‘not good for the welfare of the animals’. Tian Tian and Yang Guang arrived in Edinburgh in 2011 on a ten-year loan. Panda cubs are routinely returned to China at two years old.
A Royal Zoological Society of Scotland spokesman said yesterday: ‘We routinely work with the wider zoological community to share husbandry, welfare and breeding knowledge and understanding across a broad range of species, including giant pandas.’
Last week it emerged that Edinburgh Zoo’s director of giant pandas, Iain Valentine, had quit after more than a decade in the job.