Efforts to restore panda habitat have come too late while the emphasis on captive breeding programs has been detrimental to the species, according to an international expert on giant pandas.

Kati Loeffler of the International Federation for Animal Welfare, who spent a decade studying giant pandas on the mainland, argued that conditions were not yet right for captive pandas to be released to the wild.

"The interest for pandas is supposed to be conservation of the species, but all the effort goes into captive breeding," she said.

"The animals born in captivity in China are raised in a highly human-dominated environment with severe environmental and psycho-behavioural challenges to the development of the animals. These individuals are not normal pandas, nor will they ever be."

Originally, scientists agreed that China needed to build a stock of 300 captive giant pandas to keep the species from extinction. That figure was raised to 500 three years ago, against the advice of many scientists.

"The argument for captive breeding is to raise a stock population for reintroduction into the wild, Loeffler said. "Reintroduction is entirely inappropriate for several reasons, the greatest of which is that there are no adequate, demonstrated efforts to restore, much less to preserve, the habitats that pandas need for their continued existence on the planet."

Contrary to popular belief, the millions of dollars paid by overseas zoos for the loan of pandas from the mainland did "very little if anything to promote the conservation of the species", Loeffler added.

"If people are serious about supporting the wild panda population, they should restore and properly protect wild panda habitats and keep humans as far away from them as possible."

(HK Edition 01/03/2013 page4)