Why are pandas hunted

They were so pleased with their conquest that they wrote a tell-all, Trailing the Giant Panda. In , New York dress designer and socialite Ruth Harkness captured a baby male panda in Sichuan that she bottle-fed and named Su Lin. In , Chi-chi, originally slated for sale to a U.

Deciding that there was no better candidate than the lovable Chi-chi, the WWF chose the panda as its official logo in , and the black-and-white bamboo-munching creature has been an international symbol of wildlife conservation ever since.

China made giant pandas a protected species in , the first captive-bred panda cub was born in , and poaching was criminalized in , setting strict new penalties of at least ten years in jail or even death. Even so, it took time to stamp out the practice of panda poaching.

Three smuggled pelts were reported seized by Hong Kong customs authorities in , and China arrested for panda hunting in , recovering pelts. Although intentionally harming a panda is now unthinkable, other bear species do not enjoy the same protections.

Chinese today still consume the bile extracted from moon bears, sun bears, and brown bears; the substance is believed to be therapeutic and is an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. Yet bile extraction is a painful and invasive process, and some bear bile farms keep bears locked in tiny cages for years at a time. She told Foreign Policy that it is a "source of great sadness" to see other bears in China "maligned and cruelly exploited in bear farms across the country.

Pandas and other bears "share so many similarities but are treated so very differently," she said. Only a few have dared argue against trying to save the pandas, calling the effort doomed and a waste of money.

It spends a fortune on panda preservation, from breeding parks to research, but also earns millions of dollars annually by leasing the animals to overseas zoos and by displaying them as tourist attractions at home. Over the past several decades, Chinese scientists have developed and honed the difficult techniques required to breed pandas in captivity, in making a breakthrough that may help pandas bred in captivity to return to the wild. Pandas are frequently born in pairs but mothers struggle to care for both cubs; the simple but powerful innovation has been to let other captive panda females foster one of the cubs.

Pandas are the face of animal rights but in the popular imagination, they are not really bears at all — they are cartoon characters, a creation of movies like Kungfu Panda , the fuzzy panda hats sold at tourist attractions around China, and even Fuwa the Panda, one of the five mascots of the Beijing Olympics.

Ten people have been held in China on suspicion of hunting a panda to sell its fur and meat, Chinese state television says. Police discovered the panda's skin and 9. Officers said the panda was shot dead by two brothers in Zhaotong in southern Yunnan province. Thousands of people responded to the news on the Chinese social media site, Weibo, and condemned the crime. Panda poaching is extremely rare in China where the endangered animals are seen as a national treasure.

With wild panda numbers as low as they are, even a single panda killed by poachers is a devastating loss. Maria Cook is a freelance and fiction writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. She has written about science as it relates to eco-friendly practices, conservation and the environment for Green Matters. Tasmanian Devil Facts for Kids. How Do Giant Pandas Survive? Why Are Jaguars Endangered Animals? The Role of Tigers in the Ecosystem.

Endangered Species in the African Savanna. What Eats or Kills a Tasmanian Devil? Endangered Species in the European Deciduous Forest. What Are the Bobcat's Enemies? Animals Losing Their Homes in the Rainforest. Language English. Panda's natural enemies. Giant pandas face very few predators. A fully grown panda is far too formidable a foe for most predators, but some animals can prey on cubs.

Potential predators include jackals, snow leopards and yellow-throated martens, all of which are capable of killing and eating panda cubs. Indeed, the animated blockbuster Kung Fu Panda tells the story of Po, a panda who is an apprentice noodle-maker and kung-fu fanatic, and whose greatest enemy is Tai Lung: a fierce kung-fu fighting snow leopard.

In real life, snow leopards, which are also endangered, share some of the same habitats as the black and white bears and pose a threat to young pandas. Can pandas fight back?