A leading worldwide group has taken the giant panda off its endangered list thanks to decades of conservation efforts, but China’s government discounted the move on Monday, saying it did not view the status of the country’s beloved symbol as any less serious.
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Giant pandas are no longer threatened with extinction after years of conservation efforts, an worldwide environmental group said, but the Chinese government says it is “too early” to make such a call.
Meanwhile, IUCN downgraded the eastern gorilla, a victim of African civil wars and hunting, to “critically endangered”.
A giant panda and her cub at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center in Wolong, Sichuan province.
A nationwide census in 2014 found 1,864 giant pandas living in the wild in China, an increase of 17 percent over 2004, IUCN quoted SFA’s statistics as saying, leading the organization to downgrade the panda’s status to vulnerable.
The main population of Eastern gorillas, the biggest primates weighing up to 440 pounds, tumbled to an estimated 3,800 primates in 2015 from 16,900 in 1994, according to the report issued at a congress in Hawaii. China outlawed the panda skin trade in 1981, and the 1988 Wildlife Protection Law banned poaching went into effect with the highest protected status available bestowed on the panda.
“The Chinese have done a great job in investing in panda habitats, expanding and setting up new reserves”, said Ginette Hemley, senior vice president at the World Wildlife Fund. China now has 67 reserves that protect about two-thirds of its panda population.
Tian Tian is the half-brother of Bai Yun, a 24-year-old female at the San Diego Zoo.
Global groups and the Chinese government have worked to save wild pandas and breed them at enormous cost, attracting criticism that the money could be better spent saving other animals facing extinction. Unfortunately, the Eastern Gorilla did not fair as well as the other species and is now considered critically endangered.
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“To see the Eastern gorilla – one of our closest cousins – slide towards extinction is truly distressing”, says Inger Andersen, IUCN Director General in a press release.
