China Panda "Tracking" Tours Court Controversy
Date: 25-Sep-06
Country: CHINA
An estimated 1,600 wild giant pandas, which are endangered and regarded as a national treasure in China, live in nature reserves in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.
The Aba State Jiuzhai Wolong Giant Panda Industry Co. Ltd., a state-sponsored company selling "panda-related trip services" in Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan, allows tourists to spend 2.5 hours searching for pandas for a fee of 360 yuan (US$45) per person, the Shanghai Daily said.
A company spokesman said the tours promoted "tracking many wild and semi-wild pandas" but did not guarantee a sighting.
"This is a world first. Our environmental protection and management demands are very high. Having invited experts to assess it, the trips are limited to 20 per day and cannot involve more than five people per group," the Beijing Youth Daily quoted a spokesman for the company as saying.
Guides would accompany each group and tourists would have to carry their rubbish out of the park and undergo "environmental, safety education and wilderness training", the paper said, without providing details.
Environmentalists expressed concerns.
"If garbage is not dealt with and visitors are not supervised properly, the search trips are sure to do harm to the pandas," Tang Chunxiang, a professor of panda protection at Beijing University, told the Shanghai Daily.
Wolong reserve officials, however, saw them as a chance to raise revenue in a remote, impoverished region where farmers are forbidden to clear land to plant crops.
