There must be concern amongst those that need the Giant Panda to be endangered so that they can continue to exploit its image for their own ends, that it's now less endangered than before. \u00a0As such, it must be feared that the credulous may now be less likely to cough up their cash.<\/p>\n
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has\u00a0declared that the Giant Panda is\u00a0no longer endangered but just\u00a0\"vulnerable\". \u00a0The justification for this is\u00a0based\u00a0on China\u2019s wild panda population increasing\u00a0from 1,596 in 2004 to 1,864 in 2014.<\/p>\n
This does not sound a lot to me, especially as they remain as feckless as ever, and the Chinese State Forestry Administration immediately said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we downgrade their conservation status, or neglect or relax our conservation work, the populations and habitats of giant pandas could still suffer irreversible loss and our achievements would be quickly lost. \u00a0We\u2019re not being alarmist by continuing to emphasise the panda species\u2019 endangered status.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
... reminding everyone\u00a0that Giant Pandas\u00a0still struggle to reproduce (ie, feckless), arguing that they remain at great risk of extinction.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, on BBC Radio 4 2200 News one night, a bloke whose name I missed commented on the importance of Giant Pandas\u00a0in the wild, saying how difficult it is to help population numbers by captive breeding programmes. \u00a0He summed it up nicely in a memorable phrase:<\/p>\n
\"It's hard to teach a panda to be a panda.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Indeed it is. \u00a0Ungrateful b****s.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There must be concern amongst those that need the Giant Panda to be endangered so that they can continue to exploit its image for their own ends, that it's now less endangered than before. \u00a0As such, it must be feared...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}