Ami Vitale: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, I understand that in the 1960s, the survival rate for panda babies was pretty low. I think you mentioned once 30 percent, and right now, it’s about 90 percent. What accounts for that difference? What is it we’re getting right now? Well, it’s such a great story. The truth is, I think the most important thing is that they did a great job of making the world fall in love with pandas, and more importantly, the people living closest to the pandas. Pandas were poached for a long time. I think harsher policing, harsher laws if you poached a panda, and then just making the world fall in love with this creature really did a lot for panda conservation. Then there was another piece, which was, they understood that the pandas were endangered in the wild, and so they did a few things. They had a breeding program because they wanted to have 300 pandas in captivity in case they went extinct in the wild. Actually, they managed to crack the code, learn how to breed them in captivity, and now are releasing them back into the wild. The last important piece of it is, China is one of the few countries in the world where forest coverage is actually growing. They are reforesting areas, connecting existing corridors where pandas live so that they can move when there are droughts and there are bamboo die-offs, basically giving them space to survive. That is probably the most essential thing we can do around the world for all of wildlife. Speaking of breeding, can you explain to me the Darwinian equilibrium with pandas? If I have this right, the females are fertile for only a few days a year, and actually, pandas themselves don’t already know how to do it. Why would they have evolved that way? How does that make sense?…

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