American zoos sent millions to save pandas, Chinese govt diverts funds to build roads, buildings: NYT

A bombshell New York Times report suggested that the tens of millions of dollars American zoos have sent to China for the right to host and display pandas are not being used by the country to actually protect the pandas. The money, given under the US Endangered Species Act, was used by the Chinese authorities to build apartments, buildings, roads, etc., instead of the protection of the species.

While this has been a major oversight on the part of the American authorities, China has refused to account for millions of American dollars. As per the report, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the payments, has been raising concerns over the matter for two decades to both American zoo administrators and Chinese officials.

Not only this, on three occasions, the US government has frozen payments to China over incomplete record-keeping, documents show. The NYT report suggested that even American zoos are aware that China is not using the money for conservation. However, they fear that if Fish and Wildlife cut off the money altogether, China could demand the return of its bears. As a result, the American regulator allowed the money to keep on flowing and did not scrutinize the matter so thoroughly.

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The gross oversight

The Fish and Wildlife officials said that China has more or less been dismissive over the matter. “There was always pushing back and forth about how the US shouldn’t ask anything,” said Kenneth Stansell, a former Fish and Wildlife official who travelled to China throughout the 2000s to discuss pandas.

He said his Chinese counterparts argued that “it shouldn’t be of any concern to the US government.” Stansell’s visit to Beijing was one of the many made in two decades, but none of these visits were revealed to the public, NYT reported.

So where did the money go?

It is pertinent to note that zoos in the United States are obligated to give around $1 million a year to get pairs of pandas from China. According to NYT, two decades of financial reports suggested that the US has paid over $86 million to a pair of organizations run by the Chinese government for the pandas. Zoos elsewhere in the world also contributed millions more.

The sum is far larger than what zoos have usually spent on overseas donations for any other species. However, the records suggested that China allocated the funds to build apartment buildings far from nature reserves. Not only this, Beijing also bought computers and satellite television for local government offices and built at least three museums with the money.

It was revealed that American money helped China to transform a breeding centre into a bustling attraction that, according to an architect’s plans, may soon welcome as many visitors as Disneyland. It is important to note that these payments are just the tip of the iceberg and include only those that are documented. Zoo administrators have at times struggled to persuade their Chinese partners to disclose the spending.

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“You had to take their word,” David Towne, who until 2016 was the director of a foundation representing American zoos with pandas, told NYT. “China felt it was not our business — that we got the pandas, and we shouldn’t tell them how to spend the money,” he added. While the early agreement gave zoos the right to verify funding on the ground, recent contracts signed by the National Zoo in Washington and by the San Diego Zoo make no mention of checking how money is spent. Zoos in Europe have also faced similar issues.