By David Jones
Rare bear: Nigel Marven meets a 10-day old baby panda at Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan province, China
Masked and gowned to avoid passing on an infection, wildlife presenter Nigel Marven gazes in wonder at the tiny and rather odd- looking creature nestling helplessly inside a blanketed incubator.
Just a few inches long, with a furless, pink body and tightly scrunched-up eyes, it could be a newborn rabbit, or some sort of rodent, perhaps.
In fact, this is a nine-day-old giant panda — still blind and unable to crawl — being nurtured in a remarkable Chinese panda nursery which is leading the fight to safeguard the future of the world’s most emblematic animal.
The project is considered so sensitive that only a handful of Westerners — all veterinary specialists — have been permitted inside the sound-proofed, softlylit nursery at the giant Panda Breeding And Research Centre in Chengdu, Western China.
But Marven was made an exception this week after he was appointed as Chengdu’s ‘Panda Ambassador’ — an honour previously awarded to just one man: China’s favourite actor, Jackie Chan.
And only the Daily Mail was there to capture a moment that the 49-year-old presenter described as ‘the most memorable of my career’.
The newborn panda has been named Jiao Qing, meaning Mother’s Celebration, and he is the first surviving cub of the new birthing season, which lasts until September.
The only other panda born this summer survived for just four days at Beijing Zoo.
Because pandas are so tiny at birth — weighing around 3oz — and have notoriously poor eyesight, it was crushed to death when its mother accidentally rolled on top of it.
At birth, Jiao Qing was equally minuscule. Indeed, until the week before he arrived, animal scientists were not even sure that his 15-year-old mother Jiao Zi was pregnant.
Yet, thanks to the sort of paediatric care once reserved for China’s privileged little emperors, he is coming along famously and his size has already doubled.
In six months’ time he will stop suckling and munch his first bamboo shoots. By this time next year, his luxuriant black-and-white coat will have grown and he will be recognisable as the cuddly — if slightly melancholy — bear that melts our hearts.
Though born in captivity, he may one day be released into the wild under an exciting and highly-sophisticated experiment designed to boost the panda population and save the species from extinction.
With an estimated 1,800 giant pandas still in their natural habitat — the bamboo-covered mountains of Western China — and fewer than 300 in zoos and preserves, they remain on the critically-endangered list. For long-standing cultural reasons, however (and because they can rent pandas to foreign zoos for up to £1million a year), the Communist authorities are determined to preserve their prized natural symbol.
Precious: The baby, Jiao Qing, is the first first surviving cub of the base's birthing season, which lasts until September
‘The panda is as much a part of China as The Great Wall,’ says Marven. ‘Losing them would be unthinkable — like Britain losing St Paul’s Cathedral.’
The Chinese government has now set up 50 giant panda research centres. With 97 resident pandas, the one at Chengdu — the so- called ‘panda capital of the world’ — is among the most important.
For a Briton to be made its second-ever ambassador is therefore quite extraordinary.
It is also a mark of how far China has progressed since the era of what was referred to as ‘panda diplomacy’ — when these rare creatures were jealously guarded, but occasionally gifted to political leaders such as Edward Heath and Richard Nixon.
Kung-fu film star Chan was awarded his title in a blaze of publicity last year, when he adopted two pandas and donated £100,000 towards research.
Marven’s elevation was an altogether more low-key affair. However, his daring encounters with dangerous predators have made him a celebrity in China and he was given the honour while filming a new five-part TV series about pandas.
It will be screened on Channel 5 this autumn and broadcast later to tens of millions of people worldwide.
The presenter is clearly taking his new position very seriously. ‘It will be my duty to go out and tell as many people as possible why the panda is so remarkable, because that’s the best way to get them interested in conserving it,’ he told me in Chengdu this week.
Yet becoming a panda ambassador has also brought him an unexpected and very handsome perk.
In a country where only the elite own their own homes, Marven has been granted the 99-year lease on a breathtakingly beautiful three-acre plot of land nestling in the mountains near the spa resort of Huashuiwan, two hours’ drive from the city.
I accompanied him when he was taken to see this extraordinary gift — which local officials estimate to be worth around £1million — and he was so thrilled that he promptly stripped off and dived beneath a gushing waterfall.
Hope: Staff take care of tiny Jiao Qing in his incubator as tourists look on
‘Isn’t life amazing?’ he grinned as he dried off. ‘Of all the wonderful things that have happened to me, there has been nothing like this. It’s so peaceful here. I’ll do an inventory of all the insects and birds. And I’ll even have wild pandas for neighbours.’
Marven plans to build a traditional Chinese cottage on his new plot and to visit regularly with his wife Gill and their daughter Eleonora, who will be two in October.
It will be something of a trek from their other two homes, one near Bristol and one in South Africa’s Western Cape. But to ease his journey, the local mayor has even promised to replace the steep, stony path leading to his plot with a tarmac road.
With land ownership banned in China and millions still living in poverty, all this largesse might seem excessive; but the people here revere their pandas — and those who seek to protect them — and Marven was given a hero’s welcome.
Before making his new series, his closest encounter with a giant panda had come as a boy when his father Roger took him to see Chi Chi, then the star attraction at London Zoo.
The loveable female was loaned to the zoo and inspired Sir Peter Scott’s logo for the World Wildlife Fund.
Recently, however, Marven went out with expert trackers in an effort to hunt them down in the bamboo thickets. Because they are so elusive — scurrying off at the mere sound of a snapped twig — it is a task that requires great patience and stealth, but after 12 frustrating days they crept within ten yards of a mother nursing her cub while leaning against a tree.
He believes this is another first — for no other TV presenter has been filmed with a wild panda. ‘It was an incredible moment,’ he says. ‘Afterwards we celebrated with a special meal and toasted our success with rice wine. I don’t drink, but I was drunk on euphoria.’
Much of his knowledge for the TV series was gleaned from the Chengdu ‘panda base’, where a team of experts is striving to make the sight of pandas padding about in the bamboo forests less of a rarity.
And at a time when a question mark about the future hangs over so many animals — from polar bears to whales — this is one conservation story that seems likely to have a happy ending.
For scientists know much more now than they did in the Sixties, when no one could fathom why Chi Chi refused to mate with Moscow Zoo’s An An and concluded that either their failure was a symptom of the Cold War or that pandas simply didn’t like sex.
Special bond: Marven meets a one-year-old female panda namedYali at Chengdu Panda Base
For many years, all kinds of bizarre methods were tried to induce copulation. Animals were shown videos of other pandas mating and even given Viagra.
Now scientists have discovered that pandas do have a strong libido — but only for three days of the year, when the females are on heat.
The rest of the time, males and females cannot abide one another and will fight viciously when put together. Armed with this knowledge, their hormones are being closely monitored so that they can be placed together at precisely the right time.
For those females who still find it difficult to conceive, IVF is also being used, and last summer the first test-tube panda was born at the Wolong research facility, four hours away from Chengdu.
But according to Li Mingxi, animal control manager at Chengdu, these are just some of the reasons why pandas are breeding more prolifically than before. ‘Otherwise, the most fundamental change is that we are allowing them to behave as they want, rather than as we humans want,’ he told me.
‘For example, although 99 per cent of their diet is bamboo, they eat many different types and these vary according to the seasons. ‘So instead of feeding them one kind which is easy to access, we now send teams of cutters to their habitat, 4,500ft up in the Sichuan mountains, to bring back the specific bamboo they need.
‘When you remember that a fully grown panda will eat up to 200lb of bamboo a day — as much as its own body weight — you realise this is a very expensive task involving many, many workers.’
Another important step has been the introduction of air conditioning in the breeding centre because — while pandas love cold weather — they did not do well in the humidity caused by previous efforts to cool their lairs by using huge chunks of ice.
And once a female does conceive, the team faces more challenges. A giant panda’s pregnancy can last up to 300 days, and because the foetus is so tiny (900 times smaller than the mother) it is difficult to detect, even with ultrasound.
Their tiny size is one reason why, a decade ago, more than half of all newborn captive pandas died at birth or soon after.
Popular: China is determined to protect the endangered panda, as only 1,800 giant pandas remain in their natural habitat
But today, thanks to advanced monitoring techniques, more than 80 per cent survive — and with the population now relatively stable the Chinese have moved on to the most critical phase of the fight to save the panda.
This week, four pregnant females were released into a 20,000 sq ft area of bamboo forest, the first step in the project to reintroduce them fully into the wild. The Chinese first tried to free a captive panda in 2003 — but the experiment failed.
Xiang Xiang, a seemingly robust young male, survived just four years before being found dead, having apparently been killed by other pandas. This time, though, the released group has been better prepared and will be watched more carefully.
In a bizarre twist, when these creatures need help they will be assisted by researchers disguised in blackand-white panda suits in an effort to desensitise them from humans.
Before approaching the pandas, staff will also be sprayed with the scent of wild animals they would naturally come across and learn to imitate the sounds they make.
If this elaborate plan succeeds, it is hoped the four pregnant pandas’ cubs will flourish and have families of their own.
Meanwhile, more young captive pandas — perhaps including Jiao Qing — will be transferred from Chengdu to an outlying preserve to be prepared for release.
In this way, it is hoped that the wild population can be raised to a sustainable level for the first time in recent history.
When the day comes that they are removed from the endangered list, no one will be more delighted than Britain’s proud new Panda Ambassador.
During his long career he has encountered countless thrilling animals.
But, as I saw this week, nothing has moved him quite as profoundly as nuzzling up close to a vulnerable newborn panda.
Panda Week With Nigel Marven will be screened on Channel 5 this autumn
source: dailymail
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